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VICTORIAN POETS 



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VICTORIAN 
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REVISED, AND EXTENDED, BY A SUPPLEMENTARY 

CHAPTER, TO THE FIFTIETH YEAR OF THE 

PERIOD UNDER REVIEW 



BY 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 

AUTHOR OF " POETS OF AMERICA '' 




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Copyright, 1875, 
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Copyright, 1887, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

Copyright, 1903, 
By EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 



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WHOSE JUDGMENT, LEARNING, AND PROFESSIONAL DEVOTION 
HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE 

ADVANCEMENT OF CRITICISM, 

AND FURNISHED AN ENVIABLE EXAMPLE TO MEN 
OF LETTERS, 

%\p& lolume i& Iiwicribeb. 



PREFACE TO THE THIRTEENTH EDITION. 

(1887.) 



THE origin of the book now presented in an enlarged 
form is given in the Preface to the edition of 1875. 
While it was an outgrowth, as stated, of a few essays each 
relating to a single personage, its main value, from the 
ultimate point of view, consisted first in the statement of 
what appear to me the true canons of imaginative art, as 
applied to the office of the poet ; again, in studies of the 
creative temperament derived from sympathetic examina- 
tion of its possessors ; and finally, in a record of the pro- 
gress of song during a noteworthy period, and of phases 
reflecting the thought, passion, ideality, of the specified 
country and age. 

Chapters VII and VIII, in which miscellaneous groups 
were considered, though written as an afterthought, and 
not possessing the artistic unity of other chapters, proved 
especially serviceable in the last-named capacity. My gain 
in comprehension of the general drift was greater than any 
fancied loss through deviation from an eclectic literary 
standard. They completed, moreover, the annals of the 
period, and gave my book a practical if secondary value as 
a work of reference. 



vi PREFACE TO THE THIRTEENTH EDITION. 

Whether its early welcome at home and abroad, and the 
favor still vouchsafed to it, have been due to the quality of 
my argument, or to the need of such a record, or to both 
together, it is in view of this encouragement, and of the 
changes incident to the close of the typical Victorian 
epoch, that I add the supplemental matter which extends 
our survey to the present year. 

This seems the more expedient, because in a later trea- 
tise, Poets of America, I have applied the same method of 
criticism, with similar objects in view, to the poets and 
poetry of my own land. The rise of true poetry here was 
singularly coincident with that of the Victorian school in 
Great Britain, and my home -survey applies to the fifty 
years now ending with the celebration of Her Majesty's 
prolonged reign. The Victorian Poets, as enlarged, and its 
companion-volume thus proffer a general view of the poetry 
of our English tongue for the last half - century. The 
supplement itself, beyond that portion devoted to the 
afterwork of veteran leaders, is necessarily compressed 
and inclusive : in other words, is written upon the plan of 
Chapters VII and VIII, to discover current tendencies 
and the outlook, and to enhance the reference-value of the 
entire work. 



After a lapse of time which enables me to examine my 
original chapters almost as if they were the production of 
another hand, it would be strange if I did not observe cer- 
tain portions that would be written differently, with later 
and perhaps riper judgment, if I were to write them now. 



PREFACE TO THE THIRTEENTH EDITION. vn 

I see that frequent attention was paid to matters of art 
and form. Technical structure is of special interest to the 
young artist or critic. There was a marked and fascinat- 
ing advance in rhythmical variety and finish during the 
early influence of Tennyson. I do not regret its discus- 
sion, since throughout the book persistent stress is also 
laid upon the higher offices of art as the expression of the 
soul, and its barrenness without simplicity, earnestness, na- 
tive impulse, and imaginative power. The American trea- 
tise, less occupied with technical criticism, and examining 
its topic in connection with the formation of national senti- 
ment, enabled me to finish all I desired to say concerning 
poetry. These books are hopefully addressed to those who 
will read the two together, and each of them not in frag- 
ments but as a whole. 

As to the brief opinions with respect to younger singers, 
I think that a good deal of what was said has been justi- 
fied, and in a few cases notably, by their subsequent ca- 
reers. Examining the more elaborate reviews of other 
poets, I wish to amend in some degree my early criticism. 

With the comments upon Landor, Hood, Mrs. Browning, 
Tennyson, Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne, I have no 
serious disagreement. What is said of the last-named four, 
in the new text, is in keeping with what was first said, and 
illustrated by an account of their recent works. 

I confess, however, that the prominence given to Proc- 
ter seems hardly in accord with the just perspective of 
a synthetic view. It grew out of the writer's distaste 
for two characteristics of latter-day verse : on the one 



viii PREFACE TO THE THIRTEENTH EDITION. 

hand, the doubt and sadness of that which is the most in- 
tellectual ; on the other, the artificial tone of that offered 
by many younger poets, in whom the one thing needful 
seemed to be the spontaneity so natural to " Barry Corn- 
wall." 

While I thought the first of these characteristics too ex- 
cessive in the poetry of Arnold, the cultured master of his 
school, I paid full tribute to the majesty of his epic verse. 
But I was unjust in a scant appreciation of what is after 
all his most ideal trait, and his surest warrant as a poet. 
For this fault I now make reparation in the supplement. 

One or two errors of fact have been corrected in the 
original chapter on Browning, our most suggestive figure 
at the close of a period which Tennyson dominated in its 
prime. My feeling with respect to some of this profound 
writer's idiosyncrasies is still unchanged. Yet in view of 
my extended recognition of his matchless insight and re- 
sources, — and conscious of my own respect for the genius 
and personality of one to whose works I was guided in 
youth by kindred that knew and honored him, — it is hard 
for me to understand that even his uncompromising wor- 
shippers can discover between the lines of my criticism 
traces of hostility. The chapter, however, is defective in 
one important respect. Drawing a sharp distinction be- 
tween the histrionic, objective method of the early dram- 
atists and that of Browning, I did not at once follow it with 
an incisive statement of the qualities in which his power 
and effectiveness consist. A praiseworthy reader — by 
which, as before, I mean one who accepts an essay in its 



PREFACE TO THE THIRTEENTH EDITION. IX 

entirety, and does not hang his approval or disapproval 
upon a single point — can find these qualities plainly set 
forth in the comments upon Dramatic Lyrics, Men and 
Women, Pippa Passes, etc. But that there may be no 
doubt, and to make up for possible shortcomings, I have 
referred in the supplement at some length to the specific 
originality and nature of this poet's dramatic genius. 

Beyond these modifications, I have none with which in 
this place to trouble the reader, — deprecating, as I do, fin- 
ical changes in prose or poetry once given to the public, 
and choosing to let a treatise that has been so leniently 
judged stand in most respects as it was originally written. 

A revision and extension has been made of dates, etc., in 
the marginal' notes, and some pains taken to insure correct- 
ness. The new Analytical Index covers both divisions of 
the book. My thanks are again due to friends, especially 
to Messrs. R. H. Stoddard, R. W. Gilder, Brander Mat- 
thews, George R. Bishop, — and to Mr. William T. Peoples, 
of the N. Y. Mercantile Library, — for the use of various 
books which were not already upon my shelves, and which 
my London agents were unable to procure. 

E. C. S. 

New York, July, 1887. 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION, 
(i875-) 



THE contents of this volume chiefly relate to the 
design announced at the beginning of the introduc- 
tory chapter, but I will prefix a brief statement of its scope, 
and of the principles that underlie its judgment. 

Although presented as a book of literary and biograph- 
ical criticism, it also may be termed an historical review 
of the course of British poetry during the present reign, — 
if not a minute, at least a compact and logical, survey of 
the authors and works that mainly demand attention. 
Having made a study of the poets who rank as leaders of 
the recent British choir, a sense of proportion induced 
me to enlarge the result, and to use it as the basis of 
a guide-book to the metrical literature of the time and 
country in which those poets have flourished. It seemed 
to me that, by including a sketch of minor groups and 
schools, and giving a connection to the whole, I might 
offer a work that would have practical value for uses of 
record and reference, in addition to whatever qualities, as 
an essay in philosophical criticism, it should be found to 
possess. 



xiv PREFACE. 



To this end Chapters VII. and VIII. were written ; side- 
notes have been affixed throughout the volume, and an 
analytical index prepared of the whole. There is much 
dispute among the best authorities with respect to literary 
and biographical dates, and a few matters of this sort 
remain open to doubt ; but in many instances, where the 
persons concerned are still living, I have been successful in 
obtaining the requisite information at first hand. 

A reference to the notes and index will show what seems 
to my own mind, after the completion of these essays, their 
most conspicuous feature. So many and various qualities 
are displayed by the poets under review that, in writing 
of their works and lives, I have expressed incidentally 
such ideas concerning the aim and constituents of Poetry 
as I have gathered during my acquaintance with the his- 
toric body of English verse. Often, moreover, a leading 
author affords an illustration of some special phase of the 
poetic art and life. The case of Browning, for example, 
at once excites discussion as to the nature of poetic expres- 
sion ; that of Mrs. Browning involves a study of the poetic 
temperament, its joys and sorrows, its growth, ripeness, 
and decline. Hood's life was that of a working man of 
letters ; in Tennyson's productions we observe every aspect 
of poetry as an art, and the best average representation of 
the modern time ; while Landor not only affords another 
study of temperament, but shows the benefits and dangers 
of culture, of amateurship, and of intellectual versatility as 
opposed to special gift. In Arnold we find a passion of the 



PREFACE. xv 



intellect, in Procter the pure lyrical faculty, in Buchanan 
the force and weakness of transcendentalism, in Swinburne 
the infinite variety of melodious numbers, and the farthest 
extreme of rhythm and diction reached at this stage of 
metrical art. Home, Bailey, Lytton, Morris, and Rossetti 
are each suggestive of important and varying elements 
which make up the general quality of recent imaginative 
song. The different forms of poetry — reflective, idyllic, 
lyric, and dramatic — successively or in combination pass 
under review, for the modern era has been no less com- 
posite than refined. If not so eminent for poetic vigor 
as the impetuous Georgian revival which preceded it, nor 
characterized by dramatic greatness like that of the early 
and renowned Elizabethan age, it is in its own way as 
remarkable as either of those historic times, and on the 
score of complex and technical achievement full of real 
significance to the lyric artist and the connoisseur. 

In pursuing the general subject by an examination of 
the foremost poets, I have tried to convey a just idea of 
the career and genius of each, so that any portrait, taken 
by itself, might seem complete, and distinct from its fellows. 
In certain cases we are required to observe temperament, — 
in others, extended lyrical achievements or unusual traits 
of voice and execution. If my criticism seems more tech- 
nical than is usual in a work of this kind, it is due, I think, 
to the fact that the technical refinement of the period has 
been so marked as to demand full recognition and analysis 
It is seldom that an earnest reviewer, whether lay or 



XVI PREFACE. 



professional, can escape wholly the charge of dogmatism. 
Doubtless every reader will discover points that neither 
accord with his judgment, nor seem to him fairly taken ; 
yet I trust that there will be few who will not elsewhere 
find reason to consider my work something better than 
labor thrown away. After all, a critic speaks only for 
himself, and his opinion must be taken for what it is 
worth, — as being always open to the broader criticism of 
those to whom it is submitted. 

The chapter' on the relations of Tennyson and Theocritus, 
though somewhat in the nature of an excursus, relates to 
a matter which seems to me of more significance than the 
obligations of the modern idyllist to the ancient, — namely, 
the singular likeness of the Victorian period to the Alex- 
andrian, manifest in both external conditions and poetic 
results. 

Let me now say that this book is not the fulfilment of a 
deliberate plan, but that a peculiar train of thought and 
incident has led to its completion. There are times when 
a writer pauses to consider the work produced by his asso- 
ciates, and the influences by which this has been enlarged 
or injured. Reviewing the course of American poetry, 
since it may be said to have had a pathway of its own, 
I have tried to note the special restrictions and special 
advantages by which it has been affected. Our men of 
true poetic genius, although they have produced charming 
verse of an emotional, lyrical or descriptive kind, have 
seemed indisposed or unable to compose many sustained 



PREFACE. xv 11 



and important works. At first I designed to write of the 
difficulties which they have experienced, consciously or 
unconsciously, — some of these pertaining to the youth of 
the country, and to the fact that, as in the growth of a 
sister-art, landscape-painting usually must precede the rise 
of a true figure-school. I might touch upon the lack of 
inspiring theme and historic halo, of dramatic contrast 
and material, and of a public that can appreciate the 
structure, no less than the sweetness and quality, of a noble 
poem. With various exceptions, there has been a want 
of just criticism ; and even now a defect with many of 
the poets themselves is a cloudy understanding of their 
true mission and of what poetry really is. Beyond the 
charm of freshness, no great success in verse is attainable 
without that judicial knowledge of the poet's art which 
is the equivalent of what is indispensable to the painter, 
the sculptor, and the musician, in their respective depart- 
ments. 

But with regard to the causes of the success and failure 
of our own poets I easily perceived that some of the most 
important were not special, but general : belonging to the 
period, and equally affecting the verse of the motherland. 
This led me to make a study of a few British poets : first 
of one, Landor, whose metrical work did not seem, upon 
the whole, a full expression of his unusual genius ; then 
of others, notably Tennyson, who more obviously represent 
the diverse elements of their time. In order to formulate 
my own ideas of poetry and criticism, it seemed to me 



xviii PREFA CE. 



that I could more freely and graciously begin by -choosing 
a foreign paradigm than by entering upon the home-field, 
and that none could be so good for this purpose as the 
poetry of Great Britain, — there being none so compre- 
hensive, and none with which myself and my readers are 
more familiar. Affection, reverence, national feeling, or 
some less worthy emotion, may be thought to prevent 
an American from writing without prejudice of Bryant, 
Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, and the rest ; doubtless there 
are considerations which sometimes render British journal- 
ists disinclined to review Tennyson and Browning with 
that indifferent spirit which characterizes their judgment 
of eminent American poets. Lastly, upon a survey of the 
last forty years, I saw that what I term the Victorian 
period is nearly at an end, and that no consecutive and 
synthetic examination of its schools and leaders had yet 
been made. This led me to go on and to complete the 
present work. 

It follows that these essays are not written upon a 
theory. The author has no theory of poetry, and no par- 
ticular school to uphold. I favor a generous eclecticism, 
or universalism, in Art, enjoying what is good, and believ- 
ing that, as in Nature, the question is not whether this 
or that kind be the more excellent, but whether a work 
is excellent of its kind. Certain qualities, however, distin- 
guish what is fine and lasting. The principles upon which 
I rely may be out of fashion just now, and not readily 
accepted. They are founded, nevertheless, in the Miltonic 



PRE FA CE. xix 



canon of poetry, from which simplicity no more can be 
excluded than sensuousness and passion. The spirit of 
criticism is intellectual ; that of poetry (although our curi- 
ously reasoning generation often has forgotten it) is nor- 
mally the offspring of emotion, — secondly, it may be, of 
thought. I find that the qualities upon which I have 
laid most stress, and which at once have opened the way 
to commendation, are simplicity and freshness, in work 
of all kinds ; and, as the basis of persistent growth, and 
of greatness in a masterpiece, simplicity and spontaneity, 
refined by art, exalted by imagination, and sustained by 
intellectual power. Simplicity does not imply poverty of 
thought, — there is a strong simplicity belonging to an 
intellectual age ; a clearness of thought and diction, nat- 
ural to true poets, — whose genius is apt to be in direct 
ratio with their possession of this faculty, and inversely as 
their tendency to cloudiness, confusion of imagery, obscu- 
rity, or "hardness" of style. It may almost be said that 
everything really great is marked by simplicity. The 
poet's office is to reveal plainly the most delicate phases 
of wisdom, passion, and beauty. Even in the world of 
the ideal we must have clear imagination and language : 
the more life-like the dream, the longer it will be remem- 
bered. 

The traits, therefore, which I have deprecated earnestly 
are in the first place obscurity and hardness, and these 
either natural, — implying defective voice and insight, or 
affected, — implying conceit and poor judgment; and sec- 



XX PREFACE. 



ondly that excess of elaborate ornament, which places 
decoration above construction, until the sense of origi- 
nality is lost — if, indeed, it ever has existed. Both ob- 
scurity and super-ornamentation are used insensibly to 
disguise the lack of imagination, just as a weak and 
florid singer hides with trills and flourishes his inability 
to strike a simple, pure note, or to change without a slid- 
ing scale. 

But among true poets of the recent schools some have 
gone to the other extreme, putting the thought too far 
above the art, and have neglected melody and finish alto- 
gether, as if despising accomplishments now so widely 
diffused. This also is a fault common in an advanced 
period, especially in one eminent for speculative and meta- 
physical research. I have not overlooked this heresy, 
although steadfastly opposing meretricious efforts to attract 
notice by grotesque, fantastic, and other artificial means. 
If such methods prevail in an over-ripe country they should 
not in our own, and I point to them as errors which 
American poetry, as it gathers strength, should be able 
easily to avoid. And thus seeing how poorly charlatanism 
and effrontery can make up for patient, humble endeavor 
and experience in art, we must discern and revere, on the 
other hand, those gifts of inspiration which endow the 
born poet, and without which no amount of toil and learn- 
ing can insure the favor of the Muses. As to the latter 
requirements, the instinct of the world, that would not 
recognize Bulwer and still pays tribute to Burns, is almost 



PREFACE. xxi 



unerring ; as to the former, it often is for a while deceived ; 
so I have found occasion to write of dilettanteism, lack of 
apprenticeship, and of the assumption of those who would 
clutch the laurel " with a single bound." Finally, the intel- 
lectual activity of our time constantly demands a reviewer's 
notice ; and passion, rare in an idyllic period, must be 
sought out and welcomed at every visible turn. 

The spirit of the following chapters has now been in- 
dicated. I have made few quotations, depending on the 
reader's means of acquaintance with the poetry of his 
time. In treating the abstract portion of my subject, 
where some generalization has seemed requisite, I have 
tried to state my meaning in brief and open terms. Much 
originality is not claimed for either manner or thought. 
My effort simply has been to illustrate, through analysis 
of the careers of various poets, what already is widely 
understood among philosophical critics. No single sketch 
has been colored to suit the author's ideas, but each poet 
has been judged upon his own merits ; yet I think the 
general effect to be as stated. 

I trust that it may not prove a wholly thankless office, 
since it certainly is not one frequently undertaken, to write 
a purely critical volume, exclusively devoted to the litera- 
ture of another land. Criticism, like science, latterly has 
found a more interested public than of old. The catholic 
reviewer will not shut his eyes to the value of new modes, 
but even that conventional criticism, which holds to ac- 
cepted canons, has its use as a counterpoise to license 



xxii PREFACE. 

and bewilderment. As to the choice of field: — while I 
would, not reassert in behalf of any verdict, least of all in 
behalf of my own, that " a foreign nation is a kind cf con- 
temporaneous posterity," it yet may be true that from 
this distance a reviewer can advantageously observe the 
general aspect of British poetry, whatever minor details 
may escape his eye. 

In concluding this work, I wish, to acknowledge my 
obligations to friends who have assisted me in its revis- 
ion : — to Professor Roswell D. Hitchcock, D. D., for val- 
uable hints concerning recent hymnology ; to Mr. Richard 
H. Stoddard, for access to his choice collection of English 
verse ; to Messrs. William J. Linton and George P. Philes, 
for important data relating to the recent minor poets ; 
and especially to Mr. Robert U. Johnson, of New York, 
and Mr. Henry H. Clark, of Cambridge, for careful and 
unstinted aid, at a time when, from prolonged illness, it 
was impossible for me to verify the statistical portion of 
my volume, or even to revise the proof-sheets as they 
came from the press. 

E. C. S. 

New York, July, 1875. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. Page 

The Period i 

CHAPTER II. 
Walter Savage Landor . • 33 

CHAPTER III. 
Thomas Hood. — Matthew Arnold. — Bryan Waller Procter . 72 

CHAPTER IV. 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning 114 

CHAPTER V. 
Alfred Tennyson 150 

CHAPTER VI. 
Tennyson and Theocritus 201 

CHAPTER VII. 
The General Choir . 234 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Subject continued 262 



xxiv CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 
Robert Browning 293 

CHAPTER X. 

Latter-Day Singers : 

Robert Buchanan. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti. — William 
Morris . 342 

CHAPTER XI. 
Latter-Day Singers: 

Algernon Charles Swinburne 379 



Twelve Years Later: A Supplementary Review 



4IS 



INDEX « .. . . . . » c « 485 



VICTORIAN POETS 



VICTORIAN POETS 



CHAPTER I. 



THE PERIOD. 



I. 

THE main purpose of this book is to examine the 
lives and productions of such British poets as 
have gained reputation within the last forty years. 
Incidentally, I hope to derive from the body of their 
verse, — so various in form and thought, — and from 
the record of their different experiences, correct ideas 
in respect to the aim and province of the art of Poetry, 
and not a few striking illustrations of the poetic life. 

In reviewing the works and careers of these singers, 
especially of the large number that may be classed as 
minor poets, we naturally shall be reminded of a pro- 
cess to which M. Taine has made emphatic reference 
in a history of previous English literature, and in his 
analysis of the one poet selected by him to represent 
the quality of recent song. This process is the insen- 
sible moulding of an author's life, genius, manner of 
expression, by the conditions of race, circumstance, and 
period, in which he is seen to be involved. 

But on the other hand, and chiefly in our recognition 
of the few master-spirits whose names, by common and 
just agreement, hold the first places upon the list under 
review, we shall observe with equal certainty that great 



Design of 
the present 
work. 



Table's the- 
ory: that an 
mdhor is 
governed by 
his period. 



Genius, 
however, is 
largely in- 
dependent of 
place or 
time. 



THE PERIOD. 



Illustration 
oftheformer 
statement ; 



and of the 
exceptions 
■which con- 
firm and 
modify it. 

Cp. " Poets 
of Amer- 
ica " : pp. 
3, 12. 



poets overcome all restrictions, create their own styles, 
and even may determine the lyrical character of a 
period, or indicate that of one which is to succeed 
them. 

Among authors of less repute we therefore shall find 
more than one rare and attractive poet hampered by 
lack of fortune and opportunity, or by a failure to har- 
monize his genius with the spirit of his time. For ex- 
ample, several persons having the true dramatic feeling 
arose, but cannot be said to have flourished, during or 
just before the early portion of the era, and were over- 
borne by the reflective, idyllic fashion which then began 
to prevail in English verse. These isolated singers — 
Taylor, Darley, Beddoes, Home, and others like them 
— never exhibited the full measure of their natural gifts. 
The time was out of keeping; and why? Because it 
followed the lead, and listened to the more courageous 
voices of still greater poets, who introduced and kept in 
vogue a mode of feeling and expression to which the 
dramatic method is wholly antagonistic. These suc- 
cessful leaders, no less sensitive than their rivals to 
the feeble and affected mood which poetry then had 
assumed, and equally familiar with the choicest models 
of every age and literature, were more wise in select- 
ing the ground upon which the expression of their 
own genius and the tendencies of the period could be 
brought together. They persisted in their art, gathered 
new audiences, and fulfilled the mission for which they 
were endowed with voice, imagination, and the poet's 
creative desire. This surer instinct, this energy and 
success, this utterance lifted above opposing voices, 
are Avhat have distinguished poets like Tennyson, the 
Brownings, Rossetti, Swinburne, from less fortunate 
aspirants whose memory is cherished tenderly by our 



CULTURE AND SPONTANEITY. 



united guild, but who failed to reach the popular heart 
or to make a significant impression upon the literature 
of their own time. 

It is an open question, however, whether a poet need 
be conscious of the existence and bearing of the laws 
and conditions under which he produces his work. It 
may be a curb and detriment to his genius that he 
should trouble himself about them in the least. But 
this rests upon the character of his intellect and 
includes a further question of the effects of culture. 
Just here there is a difference between poetry and the 
cognate arts of expression, since the former has some- 
what less to do with material processes and effects. 
The freedom of the minor sculptor's, painter's, or com- 
poser's genius is not checked, while its scope and pre- 
cision are increased, by knowledge of the rules of his 
calling, and'of their application in different regions and 
times. But in the case of the minor poet, excessive 
culture, and wide acquaintance with methods and mas- 
terpieces, often destroy spontaneity. They shut in the 
voice upon itself, and overpower and bewilder the 
singer, who forgets to utter his native, characteris- 
tic melody, awed by the chorus and symphony of the 
world's great songs. Full throated, happy minstrels, like 
Beranger or Burns, need no knowledge of thorough- 
bass and the historical range of composition. Their 
expression is the carol of the child, the warble of the 
skylark scattering music at his own sweet will. Never- 
theless, there is no strong imagination without vigorous 
intellect, and to its penetrative and reasoning faculty 
there comes a time when the laws which it has instinc- 
tively followed must be apparent ; and, later still, it 
cannot blind itself to the favoring or adverse in- 
fluences of period and place. Should these forces be 



Diverse ef- 
fects of cul- 
ture upon 
spontaneity. 



Cp. " Poets 

of A mer- 
ica " : pp. 
io9> 135, 
320, 342. 



THE PERIOD. 



The critic 's 
province. 

Cp. " Poets 
of Amer- 
ica" : pp. 
26, 223. 



Aspects of 
the time un- 
der review. 



restrictive, their baffling effect will teach the poet to 
recognize and deplore them, and to endeavor, though 
with wind and tide against him, to make his progress 
noble and enduring. 

In regard to the province of the critic there can, 
however, be no question. It is at once seen to be 
twofold. He must recognize and broadly observe the 
local, temporal, and generic conditions under which 
poetry is composed, or fail to render adequate judg- 
ment upon the genius of the composer. Yet there 
always are £ases in which poetry fairly rises above the 
idealism of its day. The philosophical critic, then, in 
estimating the importance of an epoch, also must pay 
full consideration to the messages that it has received 
from poets of the higher rank, and must take into 
account the sovereign nature of a gift so independent 
and spontaneous that from ancient times men have 
united in looking upon it as a form of inspiration. 

As we trace the course of British poetry, — from a 
point somewhat earlier than the beginning of the pres- 
ent reign, down to the close of the third quarter of 
our century, — we observe that at the outset of this 
period the sentiment of the Byronic school had de- 
generated into sentimentalism, while for its passion 
there had been substituted the calm of reverie and in- 
trospective thought. Two kinds of verse were marked 
by growing excellence. The first was that of an art- 
school, taking its models from old English poetry and 
from the delicate classicism of Landor and Keats ; the 
second was of a didactic, yet elevated nature, and had 
the imaginative strain of Wordsworth for its loftiest 
exemplar. We see these two combining in that idyllic 
method which, upon the whole, has distinguished the 
recent time, and has maintained an atmosphere un- 






SUCCESSIVE POETIC PHASES. 



favorable to the revival of high passion and dramatic 
power. Nevertheless, and lastly, we observe that a new 
dramatic and lyric school has arisen under this adverse 
influence and brought its methods into vogue, obtain- 
ing the favor of a new generation, and therewith round- 
ing to completion the poetic cycle which I have under- 
taken to review. 

The evolution of the art-school, partly from classicism, 
partly from a renewal of early and natural English feel- 
ing, may be illustrated by a study of the life and relics 
of Landor : first, because Landor, while an intellectual 
poet, was among the most perfect of those who have 
excelled in the expression of objective beauty ; again, 
because, although contemporary with Keats, his career 
was prolonged into the second half of our era, and 
thus was a portion of its origin, progress, and matu- 
rity. Throughout this time, as in other eras, various 
phases of metrical art have been displayed by authors 
who have maintained their independence of the domi- 
nant mode. Mrs. Browning wins our attention, as the 
first of woman-poets, endowed with the rarest order of 
that subjective faculty 'which is the special attribute of 
feminine genius. Hood, Arnold, and Procter may be 
selected as prominent representatives of the several 
kinds of feeling and rhythmical utterance that are no- 
ticeable in their verse. Elsewhere, as we look around, 
we soon begin to discover the influence of the emi- 
nent founder and master of the composite school. The 
method of Tennyson may be termed composite or idyl- 
lic : the former, as a process that embraces every 
variety of rhythm and technical effect ; the latter, as 
essentially descriptive, and resorting to external por- 
traiture instead of to those means by which characters 
are made unconsciously to depict themselves. Other- 



Names 
■which illus- 
trate succes- 
sive poetic 
phases. 



Outline of a 
proposed 
critical sur- 
vey. 



THE PERIOD. 



The con- 
ditions of 
the period. 



wise, it is suggestive rather than plain-spoken, and 
greatly relies upon surrounding accessories for the 
fuller conveyance of its subtle thought. After some 
comparison of the laureate with the father of Greek 
idyllic verse, — pointing out, meanwhile, the significant 
likeness between the Alexandrian and Victorian eras, 
— I shall give attention to a number of those minor 
poets, from whose diverse yet blended rays we can 
most readily derive a general estimate of the time and 
its poetic tendency. These may be partially assorted 
in groups depending upon specific feeling or style ; 
but doubtless many single lights will be found scat- 
tered between such constellations, and each shining 
with his separate lustre and position. Finally, in re- 
counting the growth of the new dramatic and ro- 
mantic schools, under the leadership of Browning and 
Rossetti, we shall find their characteristics united in 
the verse of Swinburne, — in some respects the most 
notable of the poets who now, in the prime of their 
creative faculties, strive to maintain the historic beauty 
and eminence of England's song. 

Before entering upon a citation of the poets them- 
selves, I wish to make what reference may be needful 
to the conditions of the period. Let us see wherein it 
has been marked by transition, how far it has been 
critical and didactic, to what extent poetical and crea- 
tive. A moment's reflection will convince us that it 
has witnessed a change in the conditions bearing upon 
art, as important and radical as those changes, more 
quickly recognized, that have affected the whole tone 
of social order and philosophic thought. Our rhyth- 
mical expression originated in phenomenal language 
and imagery, an inheritance from the past ; modern 
poetry has struggled painfully, even heroically, to cast 



POETRY AND SCIENCE. 



this off and adjust itself to a new revelation of the 
truth of things. The struggle is not yet ended, but con- 
tinues, — and will continue, until the relations between 
imagination and knowledge shall be fairly harmonized 
upon a basis that will inure to the common glory of 
these twin servitors of every beautiful art. 

II. 

It follows that, in any discussion of the recent era, 
the scientific movement which has engrossed men's 
thoughts, and so radically affected their spiritual and 
material lives, assumes an importance equal to that of 
all other forces combined. The time has been marked 
by a stress of scientific iconoclasm. Its bearing upon 
theology was long since perceived, and the so-called 
conflict of Science with Religion is now at full height. 
Its bearing upon poetry, through antagonism to the 
traditional basis of poetic diction, imagery, and thought, 
has been less distinctly stated. The stress has been 
vaguely felt by the poets themselves, but they are not 
given to formulating their sensations in the polemical 
manner of those trained logicians, the churchmen, — 
and the attitude of the latter has so occupied our re- 
gard that few have paused to consider the real cause 
of the technical excellence and spiritual barrenness 
common in the modern arts of letters and design. 
Yet it is impossible, when we once set about it, to 
look over the field of late English verse, and not to 
see a question of the relations between Poetry and 
Science pressing for consideration at every turn and 
outpost. 

Scientific iconoclasm is here mentioned simply as an 
existing force : not as one to be deplored, for I have 



Modern 
iconoclasm. 



The rela- 
tions be- 
tween Poetry 
and Science. 



THE PERIOD, 



No inherent 
antagonism. 



A n early 
sonnet by 
E. A. Poe. 



faith that it will in the end lead to new and fairer 
manifestations of the immortal Muse. However irre- 
pressible the conflict between accepted theologies and 
the spirit of investigation, however numerous the tra- 
ditions of faith that yield to the advances of knowledge, 
there is no such inherent antagonism between science 
and poetry. In fact, the new light of truth is no more 
at war with religious aspiration than with poetic feel- 
ing, but in either case with the ancient fables and 
follies of expression which these sentiments respec- 
tively have cherished. A sense of this hostility has 
oppressed, I say, the singers clinging to forms of 
beauty, which long remain the dearest, because loved 
the first. Their early instinct of resistance is manifest 
in the following sonnet by a poet who saw only the 
beginning of the new dispensation : — 

" Science ! true daughter of old Time thou art, 

Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. 
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, 

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities ? 

How should he love thee ? or how deem thee wise, 
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering 

To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, 
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing ? 
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car, 

And driven the Hamadryad from the wood 
To seek a shelter in some happier star ? 

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, 
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me 
The summer dream beneath the tamarind-tree ?" 

Had this youth lived to the present hour, he would 
begin, I think, to discern that Poetry herself is strug- 
gling to be free from the old and to enter upon the 
new, to cast off a weight of precedent and phenom- 
enal imagery and avail herself of the more profound 



METHOD OF THE POET. 



suggestion and more resplendent beauty of discovered 
truth ; and he would not forbid her to light the flames 
of her imagination at the torch which Science carries 
with a strong and forward-beckoning hand. 

While, therefore, there can be no irreconcilable war- 
fare between poetry and science, we discover that a 
temporary struggle is under way, and has seriously 
embarrassed the poets of the era. Let us observe the 
operation of this contest, or, rather, of this enforced 
transition to the method of the future. 

There are two ways of regarding natural objects : 
first, as they appear to the bodily eye and to the 
normal, untutored imagination ; second, as we know 
they actually are, — having sought out the truth of 
their phenomena, the laws which underlie their beauty 
jor repulsiveness. The* former, purely empirical, hith- 
erto has been the simple and poetic function of art ; 
the latter is that of reason, scientifically and radically 
informed. The one is Homeric, the other Baconian. 
Up to Coleridge's time, therefore, his definition of 
poetry, that it is the antithesis of science, though not 
complete, was true as far as it extended. Let us see 
how the ideals of an imaginative, primitive race, differ 
from those of the children of knowledge, who make 
up our later generations. 

The most familiar example will be found the best. 
Look at the antique spirit as partially revived by a 
painter of the seventeenth century. The Aurora fresco 
in the Rospigliosi palace expresses the manner in 
which it once was perfectly natural to observe the 
perpetual, splendid phenomena of breaking day. Sun- 
rise was the instant presence of joyous, effulgent deity. 
A pagan saw the morning as Guido has painted it. 
The Sun-God in very truth was urging on his fiery- 



A temporary 
conflict. 



The poetic 
and rational 
methods ex- 
amined and 
co7n£ared. 



i. The po- 
etic, or phe- 
nomenal 
mode. 



IO 



THE PERIOD. 



The antique 
spirit. 



The medie- 
val spirit. 



footed steeds. The clouds were his pathway; the 
early morning Hour was scattering in advance flow- 
ers of infinite prismatic hues, and her blooming, 
radiant sisters were floating in air around Apollo's 
chariot ; the earth was roseate with celestial light ; the 
blue sea laughed beyond. Swiftly ascending Heaven's 
archway the retinue swept on ; all was real, exuberant 
life and gladness ; the gods were thus in waiting upon 
humanity, and men were the progeny of the gods. The 
elements of the Hellenic idealism, so often cited, are 
readily understood. It appeared in the blithesome 
imagery of a race that felt the pulses of youth, with no 
dogmas of the past to thicken its current and few ana- 
lytical speculations to perturb it. Youth, health, and 
simplicity of life brought men to accept and inform 
after their own longings the (futward phenomena of 
natural things. Heaven lies about us in our infancy. 
I refer to the antique feeling (as I might to that of 
the pastoral Hebraic age), not as to the exponent of 
a period superior to our own, or comparable with it 
in knowledge, comfort, grasp of all that enhances the 
average of human welfare, but as that of a poetical 
era, charged with what has ever, until now, made the 
excellence of such times, — an era when gifted poets 
would find themselves in an atmosphere favoring the 
production of elevated poetry, and of poetry especially 
among the forms of art, since this has seemed more 
independent of aid from material science than the rest. 
But there are other types of the poetical age. Pass 
from the simple and harmonious ideals of classicism 
to the romantic Gothic era, whose genius was con- 
glomerate of old and new, and the myths of many 
ages and countries, but still fancy-free, or subject only 
to a pretended science as crude and wanton as the 



REALISM OF THE PRESENT TIME. 



II 



fancy itself; whose imagination was excited by chival- 
rous codes of honor, brave achievement, and the recur- 
rent chances and marvels of new discovery. Such, for 
example, the Elizabethan period of our own literature ; 
such the great Italian period from which it drew its 
forms. There was a certain largeness of mechanical 
achievement, and a mass of theological inquiry, in the 
time of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, and in that 
of Tasso and Ariosto, but all subject to the influence 
of superstition and romance. The world was only 
half discovered; men's fancy was constantly on the 
alert ; nothing commonplace held the mind ; even 
the lives and ventures of merchants had a wealth of 
mystery, strangeness, and speculation about them, 
which might well make an Antonio and a Sebastian 
the personages of Shakespeare's and Fletcher's plays. 
Each part of the globe was a phantasmal or fairy land 
to the inhabitants of other parts. A traveller was a 
marked man. Somewhere in Asia was the Great Khan ; 
later, in America, were cities of Manoa paved with 
gold. Nothing was extraordinary, or, rather, everything 
was so. The people fed on the material of poetry, 
and wove laurel-wreaths for those who made their 
song. 

Our own time, so eminently scientific, so devoted to 
investigation of universal truth, has found such wonders 
in the laws of force and matter, that the poetic bearing 
of their phenomena has seemed of transient worth ; 
enjoyment and excitation of the intellect through the 
acquisition of knowledge are valued more and more. 
Thinkers become ' unduly impressed with the relative 
unimportance of man and his conceptions. Our first 
knowledge of the amazing revelations of astronomy — 
which I take as a most impressive type of the cognate 



The modern 
spirit. 



12 



THE PERIOD. 



The realis- 
tic te7iden- 
cies of the 
■present time. 



sciences — tends to repress self-assertion, and to make 
one content with accepting quietly his little share of 
life and action. In earlier eras of this kind, discov- 
ery and invention occupied men's minds until, fully 
satiated, they longed for mental rest and a return to a 
play of heart and fancy. Too much wisdom seemed 
folly indeed ; dance and song and pastoral romance 
resumed their sway ; the harpers harped anew, and 
from the truer life and knowledge scientifically gained 
broke forth new blossoms of poetic art. But our own 
period has no exact prototype. It is advanced in 
civilization ; but the time of Pericles, though also 
exhibiting a modern refinement, was one of scientific 
ignorance. There was, as we have seen, a mediaeval 
spirit of scientific inquiry, but almost wholly guided 
by superstition. Even nature's laws were compelled 
to bow to church fanaticism ; experiments were looked 
upon with distrust, or conducted in secrecy; and po- 
etry, at least in respect to its cherished language and 
ideals, had no occasion to take alarm. 

But in the nineteenth century, science, freedom of 
thought, refinement, and material progress have moved 
along together. The modern student often has been 
so narrowed by his investigations as to be more unjust 
to the poet than the latter was of old to the philoso- 
pher. Art has seemed mere pastime and amusement, 
as once it seemed the devil's frippery and seduction 
to the ascetic soul of the Puritan, aglow with the 
gloomy or rapturous mysteries of his theology. Also 
by the multitude whom the practical results of science 
at last have thoroughly won over, — and who now are 
impelled by more than Roman ambition to girdle the 
earth with engineering and conquer the elements them- 
selves, — neither the songsters nor the metaphysicians, 



HUXLEY ON EDUCATION. 



13 



but the physical investigators and men of action, are 
held to be the world's great men. The De Lesseps, 
Fields, Barings, and Vanderbilts, no less than Lyell, 
Darwin, and Agassiz, wear the bay-leaves of to-day. 
Religion and theology, also, are subjected to analysis 
and the universal tests, and at last the divine and the 
poet, traditionally at loggerheads, have a common bond 
of suffering, — a union of toleration or half-disguised 
contempt. Eating together at the side-tables, neither is 
adequately consoled by reflecting that the other is no 
more to be envied than himself. The poet's hold upon 
the youthful mind and sentimental popular emotion 
has also measurably relaxed ; for a learned professor, 
who has spoken of poetic expression as " sensual 
caterwauling," and possibly regards the gratification of 
the aesthetic perceptions as of little worth, grossly un- 
derrated his position when he said that, " at present, 
education is almost entirely devoted to the cultivation 
of the power of expression and of the sense of literary 
beauty." The truth is that our school-girls and spin- 
sters wander down the lanes with Darwin, Huxley, and 
Spencer under their arms ; or if they carry Tennyson, 
Longfellow, and Morris, read them in the light of 
spectrum analysis, or test them by the economics of 
Mill and Bain. The very tendency of modern poetry 
to wreak its thoughts upon expression, of which Huxley 
so complains, naturally follows the iconoclastic over- 
throw of its cherished ideals, confining it to skilful 
utilization of the laws of form and melody. Ay, even 
the poets, with their intensely sympathetic natures, 
have caught the spirit of the age, and pronounce the 
verdict against themselves. One of them envies his 
early comrade, who forsook art to follow learning, 
and thus in age addresses him : — 



Theology. 



Huxley on 
"Scientific 
Education'''''. 
" Appletons 1 
"Journal," 
Aug. 1 4) 
1869. 



14 



THE PERIOD. 



IVhittier's 
dedication of 
" Miriam " 
to President 
Barnard. 



Surrender 
of the poets. 



"Alike we loved 
The muses' haunts, and all our fancies moved 
To measures of old song. How since that day 
Our feet have parted from the path that lay 
So fair before us ! Rich, from life-long search 
Of truth, within thy Academic porch 
Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact, 
Thy servitors the sciences exact ; 
Still listening, with thy hand on Nature's keys, 
To hear the Samian's spheral harmonies 
And rhythm of law 

And if perchance too late I linger where 
The flowers have ceased to blow, and trees are bare, 
Thou, wiser in thy choice, will scarcely blame 
The friend who shields his folly with thy name." 

The more intellectual will confess to you that they 
weary less of a new essay by Proctor or Tyndall than 
of the latest admirable poem ■ that, overpowered in 
the brilliant presence of scientific discovery, their own 
conceptions seem less dazzling. A thirst for more 
facts grows upon them ; they throw aside their lyres 
and renew the fascinating study, forgetful that the 
inspiration of Plato, Shakespeare, and other poets of 
old, often foreshadowed the glory of these revelations, 
and neglecting to chant in turn the transcendent pos- 
sibilities of eras yet to come. Science, the modern 
Circe, beguiles them from their voyage to the Hesperi- 
des, and transforms them into her voiceless devotees. 

Every period, however original and creative, has a 
transitional aspect in its relation to the years before 
and after. In scientific iconoclasm, then, we have the 
most important of the symptoms which mark the recent 
era as a transition period, and presently shall observe 
features in the structure and composition of its po- 
etry which justify us in thus ranking it. The Victorian 



METHOD OF THE PHILOSOPHER. 



15 



poets have flourished in an equatorial region of com- 
mon-sense and demonstrable knowledge. Thought has 
outlived its childhood, yet has not reached a growth 
from which experience and reason lead to visions 
more radiant than the early intuitions. The zone of 
youthful fancy, excited by unquestioning acceptance 
of outward phenomena, is now well passed ; the zone 
of cultured imagination is still beyond us. At present, 
skepticism, analysis, scientific conquest, realism, scorn- 
ful unrest. Apollo has left the heavens. The modern 
child knows more than the sage of antiquity. 

To us the Sun is a material, flaming orb, around 
which revolves this dark, inferior planet, obedient to 
central and centrifugal forces. We know that no celes- 
tial flowers bestrew his apparent pathway ■ that all this 
iridescence is but the refraction of white light through 
the mists of the upper skies. Let me in advance dis- 
avow regret for the present, or desire to recall the 
past : I simply recognize a condition which was in- 
evitable and in the order of growth to better things. 
" Much of what we call sublime," said Landor, " is 
only the residue of infancy, and the worst of it." I 
cannot disbelieve the words of a latter-day writer, that, 
" so far from being unfriendly to the poetic imagina- 
tion, science will breathe into it a higher exaltation." 
In my chapter on Tennyson I shall have occasion to 
cite the language of Wordsworth, who, with prophetic 
vision, depicted an era when the poet and the man 
of science shall find their missions harmonious and 
united. But the change is none the less severe, and 
the period has been indeed trying for the votaries of 
song. True, that already, in our glimmerings of the 
source and motion of the " offspring of Heaven first- 
born," in our partial knowledge of the meaning of 



2. The ra- 
tional, or 
scientific 
mode. 



Words- 
worth's 
Preface to 
the second 
edition of 
his poems- 



i6 



THE PERIOD. 



Embarrass- 
ment of the 
idealists. 



appearances, we can use this meaning for the lan- 
guage and basis of poetical works ; but recent poets 
have had to contend with the fact that, while men 
are instructed out of the early phenomenal faith, their 
recognition of scientific truth has not yet become that 
second nature which can replace it. The poet of to- 
day, burdened with his new wisdom, represents the 
contemporary treatment when he says, — 

"There sinks the nebulous star we call the Sun, 
If that hypothesis of theirs be sound " ; 

but it is by a prosaic effort that he recalls a fact at 
variance with the impression of his own childhood, sub- 
duing his fancy to his judgment and to the snirit of the 
time. Let myths go by, and it still remains that every 
child is a natural Ptolemaist, who must be educated to 
the Copernican system, and his untutored notions gen- 
erally are as far from the truth with regard to other 
physical phenomena. 

The characteristics of the middle portion of the 
nineteenth century have been so perplexing, that it is 
but natural the elder generation among us should ex- 
claim, " Where is it now, the glory and the dream ? " 
While other arts must change and change, the pure 
office of poetry is ever to idealize and prophesy of the 
unknown ; and its lovers, forgetting that Nature is lim- 
itless in her works and transitions, mourn that — so 
much having been discovered, robbed of its glamour, 
and reduced to prosaic fact — the poet's ancient office 
is at last put by. Let them take fresh heart, recalling 
the Master's avowal that Nature's " book of secrecy " 
is infinite ; let them note what spiritual and materia] 
spheres are yet untrod ; rejoicing over the past rather 
than hopeless of future achievement, let them examine 



THE LAW OF PROGRESS. 



with me the disenchanting process which has made 
their own time a turbulent, unrestful interval of tran- 
sition from that which was to that which shall be ; a 
time when, more than his perpetual wont, the poet 
looks " before and after, and pines for what is not." 

As in chemical physics, first sublimation, then crys- 
tallization, then the sure and firm-set earth beneath 
our feet; so in human progress, first the ethereal fan- 
tasy of the poet, then discovery by experience and 
induction, bringing us to what is deemed scientific, 
prosaic knowledge of objects and their laws. Thus in 
the earlier periods, when poets composed empirically, 
the rarest minds welcomed and honored their produc- 
tions in the same spirit. But now, if they work in this 
way, as many are still fain, it must be for the tender 
heart of women and the delight of youths, since the 
fitter audience of thinkers, the most elevated and 
eager spirits, no longer find sustenance in such empty 
magician's food. With regard to the so il of men and 
things, they still give rein to fancy and empiricism, 
for that is still unknown. Hence the new phases of 
psychical poetry, which formerly repelled the healthy- 
minded by its morbid cast. But touching material phe- 
nomena they no longer accept, even for its beauty, the 
language of myth and tradition ; they know better ; the 
glory may remain, but verily the dream has passed 
away. 

A skeptical period may call forth heroic elements of 
self-devotion ; criticism is endured and even courted, 
and the vulnerable point of an inherited faith is surely 
found. Earnest minds sadly but manfully give up their 
ancestral traditions, and refuse to seek repose in any 
creed that cannot undergo the extreme, test. But an 
age of distrust, however stoical and brave, rarely has 



Progress, 
and its law. 



Features of 
an investi- 
gating pe- 
riod. 



THE PERIOD. 



Skepticism 
unfriendly 
to creative 
art. Cp. 
' ' Poets of 
Amer- 
ica " ; p. 
128. 



The real 
and the 
ideal. 



been favorable to high and creative art. Great pro- 
ductions usually have been adjusted to the formulas 
of some national or world-wide faith, and its common 
atmosphere pervades them. The Iliad is subject to 
the Hellenic mythology, whose gods and heroes are 
its projectors and sustainers. The Divine Comedy, 
Paradise Lost, the most imaginative poems, the great- 
est dramas, — each, as it comes to mind, seems, like 
the most renowned and glorious paintings, to have 
been the product of an age of faith, however sharply 
minor sects may have contended within the limits of 
the general belief. The want of such a belief often 
has led to undue realism, or to inertness on the part 
of the best intellects, and in many other ways has 
checked the creative impulse, the joyous ardor of the 
visionary and poet. 

To make another statement of the old position of 
art in relation to knowledge, we may say that until a 
recent date the imagination, paradoxical as it may 
seem, has been most heightened and sustained by the 
contemplation of natural objects, rather as they seem to 
be than as we know they are. For to the pure and 
absorbed spirit it is the ideal only that seems real ; 
as a lover adores the image and simulacrum of his 
mistress, pictured to his inner consciousness, more than 
the very self and substance of her being. Thus Keats, 
the English apprentice, surrounded himself with all 
Olympus's hierarchy, and breathed the freshness of 
Thessalian forest-winds. But for an instance of per- 
fect substitution of the seeming for the true, commend 
me to the passion and rhapsody of Heine, who on the 
last days of his outdoor life, blind to the loving sym- 
pathy of the actual men and women around him, falls 
smitten and helpless at the feet of the Venus of Milo, 






AN APPROACHING HARMONY. 



19 



his loved ideal beauty, sees her looking upon him with 
divine pity and yearning, and hears her words, spoken 
only for his ear, " Dost thou not see that I have no 
arms, and therefore cannot help thee ? " The knowl- 
edge of unreality was present to his reason, but the 
high poetic soul disdained it, and received such con- 
solation as only poets know. So also Blake, that 
sublime visionary, tells us : "I assert for myself that 
I do not behold the outward creation, and that to me 
it is hindrance and not action. ' What ! ' it will be 
questioned, 'when the sun rises, do you not see a 
disk of fire, somewhat like a guinea ? ' ' O no, no ! I 
see an innumerable company of the heavenly host, 
crying, " Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty ! " 
I question not my corporeal eye, any more than I 
would question a window concerning a sight. I look 
through it, and not with it.' " 

There are passages in modern poetry that seem to 
forebode the approaching harmony of Poetry and Sci- 
ence ; the essays of Tyndall and Spencer are, the 
question of form left out, poems in themselves ; and 
there are both philosophers and poets who feel that 
no absolute antagonism can exist between them. Dr. 
Adolphe Wurtz, in a paper before the French Associa- 
tion, declared that the mission of science is to struggle 
against the unknown, while in letters it is enough to 
give an expression, and in art a body, to the concep- 
tions of the mind or the beauties of nature. To this 
we may add that science kindles the imagination with 
the new conceptions and new beauties which it has 
wrested from the unknown, and thus becomes the 
ally of poetry. The latter, in turn, is often the herald 
of science, through what is termed the intuition of the 
poet. Whether by means of some occult revelation, 



Approach- 
ing har- 
mony of 
Poetry and 
Science. 



A ddress on 
" The Pro- 
gress of 
Chemistry? 
at Lille, 
Aug. 20, 
1874. 



20 



THE PERIOD. 



Cp. « Poets 

of Amer- 
ica" : p2 
153-155. 
262. 



Goethe. 



Beddoes. 



or by a feminine process of quick reasoning that ap- 
proaches instinct, or, again, by his subtile power to 
" see into the life of things," the poet foretokens the 
discoveries of the man of science in the material world 
and concerning the laws of mind and being. A mod- 
ern philosopher goes back to Lucretius for the basis 
of the latest theory of matter. Before the general ac- 
knowledgment of the vibratory transmission of light, 
and of the doctrine of the correlation of forces, Goethe 
made Mephistopheles avow that 

" Light, howe'er it weaves, 
Still, fettered, unto bodies cleaves : 
It flows from bodies, bodies beautifies ; 
By bodies is its course impeded." 

In " Death's Jest-Book," that weird tragedy composed 
by a poet who preceded Darwin, we find the idea of 
evolution carried to its full extreme : — 

" I have a bit of Fiat in my soul, 
And can myself create my little world. 
Had I been born a four-legged child, methinks 
I might have found the steps from dog to man, 
And crept into his nature." 

The speaker then hints at the development of mind 
from inert matter, through the crystal, through the 
organic plant, and so on through successive grades 
of animal life culminating with the intellectual man. 
Even then he adds, — 

" Have patience but a little, and keep still, 
I '11 find means, by and by, of flying higher." 

Beddoes, it is true, was a learned investigator, and so 
was Goethe. But such poets, observing the merest 
germs of scientific discovery, foresee their ultimate 
possibilities, and thus suggest and anticipate the 
empirical confirmation of their truth. Finally, the 



BOTH TRANSITIONAL AND CREATIVE. 



21 



poet must always have a separate and independent 
province, for the spirit of Nature is best revealed by 
an expression of her phenomena and not by analysis of 
her processes. Visible beauty exalts our emotions far 
more than a dissection of the wondrous and intricate 
system beneath it. The sight of a star or of a flower, 
or the story of a single noble action, touches our 
humanity more nearly than the greatest discovery or 
invention, and does the soul more good. 

Poetry will not be able to fully avail herself of the 
aid of Science, until her votaries shall cease to be 
dazed by the possession of a new sense. Our horizon 
is now so extended that a thousand novel and sublime 
objects confuse us : we still have to become wonted to 
their aspects, proportions, distances, and relations to 
one another. We are placed suddenly, as it were, in a 
foreign world, whose spiritual significance is but dimly 
understood. At last a clearer vision and riper faith 
vvill come to us, and with them a fresh inspiration, 
expressing itself in new symbols, new imagery and 
beauty, suggested by the fuller truth. Awaiting this, 
it is our present office to see in what manner the 
quality of the intervening period has been impressed 
upon the living pages of its written song. 



III. 

While in one sense the recent era, and with more 
point than usual, may be called a transition period, it 
s found to possess, in no less degree than eras that 
have witnessed smaller changes, a character and his- 
tory of its own. Such a period may be negative, or 
composite, in the value of its art-productions. The 
dreary interval between the times of Milton and Cow- 



T he poet in 
undisturbed 
possession of 
one domain. 



A complete 
understand- 
ing not yet 
possible. 



Cp. " Poets 

of Amer- 
ica " .• pp. 
26, 27. 



The recent 
period both 
transitiona, 
and crea- 
tive. 



22 



THE PERIOD. 



The period 
transitional 
in thought 
and feeling ; 



creative, 
chiefly if i 
style and 
form. Cp. 
" Poets of 
Amer- 
ica " : pp. 
459, 460. 



per was of the former non-creative type. An eclipse 
of imagination prevailed and seemed to chill and be- 
numb the poets. They tried to plod along in the well- 
worn paths, but, like men with bandaged eyes, went 
astray without perceiving it. Substituting pedantry 
for emotion, and still harping on the old myths, they 
reduced them to vapid, artificial unreality, not having 
the faculty of reviving their beauty by new forms of 
expression. Of the art to conceal art none save a 
few like Collins and Goldsmith had the slightest in- 
stinct or control. As for passion, that was completely 
extinct. At last the soul of a later generation de- 
manded the return to natural beauty, and the heart 
clamored for pulsation and utterance: Cowper, Burns, 
Wordsworth, Byron, and their great contemporaries, 
arose, and with them a genuine creative literature, of 
which the poetry strove to express the spirit of nature 
and the emotions of the heart, — subtile, essential ele- 
ments, in which no amount of scientific environment 
could limit the poet's restless explorations. 

Our recent transition period ensued, but, in its com- 
posite aspect, how different from that to which I have 
referred ! The change which has been going on during 
this time pertains to imaginative thought and feeling ; 
the specific excellence which characterizes its poetry 
is that of form and structure. In technical finish and 
variety the period has been so advanced that an ex- 
amination of it should prove most instructive to lovers; 
of the arts. For this reason, much of the criticism 
in the following pages will be more technical than is 
common in a work of this scope ; nor can it be other- 
wise, and adequately recognize the distinctive emi- 
nence of the time. The poets have been generously 
endowed at birth, and who shall say that they have 



JOURNALISM AND PROSE ROMANCE. 



23 



not fulfilled their mission to the attainable extent? 
When not creative, their genius has been eclectic and 
refining. Doubtless the time has displayed the inva- 
riable characteristics of such periods. In fact, there 
never were more outlets to the imagination, serving 
to distract public attention from the efforts of the 
poets, than are afforded in this age of prose-romance 
and journalism. It has been a learned and scholarly 
period ; writers have busied themselves with enjoying 
and annotating the great works of the past; criticism 
has predominated, — but how exact and catholic ! How 
searching the tests by which tradition and authority 
have been tried ; how high the standard of excellence 
in art ; how intolerant the healthy spirit of the last 
thirty years toward cant and melodramatic affectation ; 
how vigorous the crusade against sham ! In all this 
we discern the remaining features which, though less 
radical in their importance than the scientific revolu- 
tion, have marked the Victorian period as one of tran- 
sition, and as composite in the thought and structure 
of its poetic art. 

Besides the restrictions to which the poets have been 
subjected by the triumphs of the journalists and novel- 
writers, their enthusiasm also is checked by the mod- 
ern dislike of emotional outgivings and display. This 
aversion naturally results from the peace, security, and 
ultra-comfortableness of the English people. It has 
been a time of repose and luxury, a felicitous Satur- 
nian era, when all rare things that poets dream of are 
close at hand. Fulfilment has stilled the voice of 
prophecy. We see disease averted, life prolonged and 
increasing in average duration, the masses clothed and 
housed, vice punished, virtue rewarded, the landscape 
beautiful with the handiwork of culture and thrift. 



A critical 
and schol- 
arly period. 



Other re- 
strictio?is to 
ideality. 



Modern 
comfort and 
refinement. 



24 



THE PERIOD. 



Restraint. 



Breeding. 



Impassi- 
bility. 



Remark by 

Grant 

White. 



Granted : but in most countries advanced to the front 
of modern refinement, the dominant spirit has been 
antagonistic to the production of great and lasting 
poetry, — and of this above other arts. For it is the 
passion of song that makes it lofty and enduring, and 
the snows of Hecla have overlaid human passion in 
English common life during most of the Victorian age. 
I am not deploring the so-called materialism of our 
century, for this may be more heroic and beneficial 
to mankind than the idealism of the past. Neverthe- 
less, and without magnifying the poet's office, it is fair 
to assume that, although a poetical era may not be best 
for the contemporary world, it is well for a poet to be 
born in such an era, and not ill for literature that he 
was so born. 

Having thus gone beyond the zone of idealism and 
the morning halo of impulsive deed and speech, we 
have reached the noonday of common-sense, breed- 
ing, facts as they are. Men do not mouth it in the 
grand manner, for the world has no patience to hear 
them, and deems them stagey or affected. Human 
emotions are the same, but modern training tones us 
down to that impassibility wherein the thoroughbred 
Christian woman has been said to rival the Indian 
squaw ; madmen are not, as of old, thought to be in- 
spired ; eccentricity bores us ; and poets, who should 
be prophets, are loath to boldly dare and differ. Men's 
hearts beat on forever, but Thackeray's Englishmen are 
ashamed to acknowledge it at their meetings and part- 
ings. The Platonists taught that the body should be 
despised ; we quietly ignore the heart and soul. The 
time is off-hand, chaffy, and must be taken in its mood. 
A point was very fairly made by " Shakespeare's 
Scholar," in his essay on "The Play of the Period," 



ADVANCE IN POETRY AS AN ART. 



25 



that the latter days have been unfavorable to strong 
dramatic verse, the highest form of poetry, and the 
surest mark of a true poetical era. The modern Eng- 
lish have not been devoted to intense heroic feeling: 
whether above or below it, who shall say? — but cer- 
tainly not within it. The novel is their drama; true, 
but chiefly the photographic novel of conventional life ; 
others have obtained a hearing slowly, by accident, or 
by sheer force of genius. They subject their tears to 
analysis, but do not care for tragic rage; avoiding 
high excitements as carefully as Septimius Felton in 
his effort to perpetuate life, they distribute their passion 
in a hundred petty emotions, and rather than be exalted 
are content with the usufruct of the five external wits. 
Domestic peace and comfort have resulted in absence 
of enthusiasm, and the rise and prolongation of an 
idyllic school in art. Adventure is the English amuse- 
ment, not a mode of action ; but the converse of this 
was true in the days of Raleigh, Drake, Sidney, and 
Richard Grenville. Not that England is wholly utili- 
tarian, " domestic, student, sensualist," as has been 
charged, but she has well defined and studied the sci- 
ence of society. All this the Victorian poets have had 
to contend with as poets, or adapt themselves to as 
clever artists, and, above all, as men of their time. 

Lastly, however, we find that the structural, artistic 
phases of modern English poetry, in scorn of the stilted 
conventionalism of the eighteenth century, have been 
of the most composite range, variety, and perfection. 
Of course the natural forms were long since discovered, 
but lyrists have learned that combinations are endless, 
so that new styles, if not new orders, are constantly 
brought out. In the ultra-critical spirit of the time, 
they enhance the strength and beauty of their meas- 



The novel. 



Cp. " Poets 

of Amer- 
ica. " : /. 
463- 



Great ad- 
vance in 
poetry as an 
art. 



26 



THE PERIOD. 



Its modern 
range and 
perfection. 



ures by every feasible process, and the careful adap- 
tation of form to theme. This is an excellence r*ot 
to be underestimated; for if, as Huxley asserts, "ex- 
pression is not valuable for its own sake," it is at least 
the wedded body of inspiration, employing the poet's 
keenest sensibilities, and lending such value to thought 
as the cutting of a diamond adds to the rugged stone. 
Never was the technique of poetry so well understood 
as since the time of Keats and the rise of Tennyson 
and his school. The best models are selected by the 
song-writers, the tale-tellers, the preachers in verse ; 
and a neophyte of to-day would disdain the triteness 
and crudeness of the master-workmen of fifty years ago. 
The greater number, instead of restricting themselves 
to a specialty, range over and include all departments 
of their art, and are lyrists, balladists, and idyllists by 
turn, achieving excellence in every direction except the 
dramatic, which indeed but few venture upon. Modern 
poetry, in short, has been as composite as modern 
architecture ; and if, as in the case of the latter, gro- 
tesque and tawdry combinations abound, there also are 
many strong and graceful structures, which excel those 
of former periods in richness and harmony of adorn- 
ment. The rhythm of every dainty lyrical inspiration 
which heralded the morning of English minstrelsy has 
been caught and adapted by the song-writers, all of 
whom, from Barry Cornwall and Hood to Kingsley 
and Jean Ingelow, have new arrangements and effects 
of their own. The extreme of word-music and word- 
painting has been attained, together with a peculiar 
condensation in imagery and thought ; so that, whereas 
the poets of the last era, for all their strength of wing, 
occupied whole passages with a single image, their 
more refined successors discover its essential quality 



TO WHA T EXTENT REFLECTED IN ART. 



27 



(somewhat as chemists embody the active principle 
of a plant in the crystalline salt), and express it by a 
single adjective or epithet. If "the light that gilds" 
our recent English poetry be "the light of sunset," 
it is indeed beautiful with all prismatic hues, and its 
lustres are often as attractive in themselves as for 
the truth and beauty which they serve to illumine. 

So far as progress is a change from the simple to the 
complex, from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, 
we may hold that an advance is making in English art. 
But a period of transition is also one of doubt and 
turbulence ; one whose characteristics it is especially 
requisite to bear in mind, in order to obtain a true 
appreciation of the leading poets who represent it. 
For we must consider an artist's good or ill fortune, 
his struggles and temptations, his aids and encourage- 
ments ; remembering that the most important art of 
any period is that which most nearly illustrates its 
manners, thoughts, and emotions in imaginative lan- 
guage or form. Through his sensitive organization the 
poet is exquisitely affected by the spirit of his time ; 
and, to render his work of future moment, seeks to 
reflect that spirit, or confines himself to expression of 
the spiritual experiences common to all ages and all 
mankind. Mr. Emerson, in his search for the under- 
lying principle of things, finds it a defect even in 
Homer and Milton, that their works are clogged with 
restrictions of times, personages, and places. Yet these 
are the world's great names ; it has no greater. The 
potent allegory of their poems comes nearer to us than 
the abstract Shastras. Their personages and places 
are but the media through which the Protean forms 
of nature are set forth. The statement of unmixed 
thought and beauty has not been the splendor of the 



Tendency of 
art to reflect 
its own time. 



Emerson : 
Essay " The 
Poet." 



28 



THE PERIOD. 



Adverse in- 
fluence of 
the recent 
era upo7i the 
minor poets. 



Cp. "Poets 

of A mer- 
ica " : pp. 
458-461. 



masters. And while it is true that nature and history 
are the poet's workshop, and all material his property, 
the studies and reproductions of foreign or antique 
models, except as practice-work, are of less value than 
what he can show or say of his own time. 

Hence it is of the highest importance to the poet 
that he should live in a sympathetic, or co-operative, if 
not heroic period. In studying the minor poets, we 
see with especial clearness the adverse influences of a 
transition era, composite though it be. A likeness of 
manner and language is common to the Elizabethan 
writers, various as were their themes and natural gifts. 
The same is apparent in the Cromwellian period with 
regard to Marvell, Shirley, and their contemporaries. 
But now, as if in despair of finding new themes to suit 
their respective talents, yet driven on to expression, 
we discern the Victorian poets, — one copying the re- 
frains and legendary feeling of illuminated missals and 
black-letter lays ; another recasting the most enchant- 
ing and famous romances of Christendom in delicious 
language and measures caught from Chaucer himself ; 
others adopting the quaint religious manner of Her- 
bert and Vaughan ; a host essaying new and conscien- 
tious presentations of the undying beauty of Greek 
mythologic lore. We see them dallying with sweet 
sense and sound, until our taste for melody and color 
is more than surfeited. The language which Henry 
Taylor applied to the poets of a former generation 
seems even more appropriate with respect to these 
artists. They, too, are characterized " by a profusion 
of imagery, by force and beauty of language, and by 

a versification peculiarly easy and adroit But 

from this undoubted indulgence in the mere luxuries 
of poetry, has there not ensued a want of adequate ap- 



STRUGGLES OF THE MINOR POETS. 



2 9 



preciation for its intellectual and immortal part? 
They wanted, in the first place, subject-matter. A feel- 
ing came more easily to them than a reflection, and 
an image was always at hand when a thought was not 
forthcoming." It is but just to say that the recent 
poets are not so wanting in reflection as in themes 
and essential purpose. These defects many have 
striven to hide by excessive finish and ornamentation. 
Conscious of this, a few, with a spasmodic effort to 
be original, break away in disdain of all art, palming 
off a " saucy roughness " for strength, and coarseness 
for vigor ; and even this return to chaos wins the 
favor of many who, from very sickness of over-refine- 
ment, pass to the other extreme, and welcome the 
meaner work for a time because it is a change. The 
effect of novelty gives every fashion a temporary 
hold ; but the calmer vision looks above and along 
the succession of modes, and seeks what is in itself 
ennobling; and every disguise of dilettanteism, aris- 
tocratic or democratic, whether it struts in the rags 
of Autolycus, or steals the robe of Prospero and apes 
his majestic mien, must ultimately fall away. In the 
search for a worthy theme, more than one of the poets 
to whom I refer has, by a tour de force, allied himself to 
some heroic mission of the day. On the other hand, 
honest agitators have been moved, by passionate zeal 
for their several causes, to outbursts of rhythmical 
expression. In most cases the lyrics of either class 
have been rhetorical and eloquent rather than truly 
poetical. Finally, in the wide diffusion of a partial 
culture, the Victorian period has been noteworthy for 
the multitudes of its tolerable poets. It has been a 
time of English minnesingers, hosts of them chanting 
" the old eternal song." 



See the 

Preface to 
"Philip Van 
Artevelde" 
London^ 

1834. 



Two forms 
of dilettante- 
ism. 



30 



THE PERIOD. 



Triumph of 
the greater 
poets over 
their restric- 
tions. 



Landor. 



Tennyson. 



Mrs. Brown- 
ing. 



Browni7ig. 



But the poets of such a period are like a collection 
of trout in water that has become stagnant or turbid. 
The graceful smaller fry, unconscious that the real 
difficulty is in the atmosphere about them, one after 
another yield to it and lose their color, flavor, and 
elastic life. But the few noble masters of the pool 
adapt themselves to the new condition, or resist it 
altogether, and abide till the disorder of the waters 
is assuaged. Reviewing the poetic genius of the clos- 
ing era, we find one strong spirit maintaining an in- 
dependent beauty and vigor through successive gen- 
erations, composing' the rarest prose and poetry with 
slight regard to temporal mode or hearing, — a man 
neither of nor for an age, — who has but lately passed 
away. Another, of a different cast, the acknowledged 
master of the composite school, has reflected his own 
period by adapting his poems to its landscape, man- 
ners, and speculation, with such union of strength and 
varied elegance as even English literature has seldom 
displayed. We find a woman — an inspired singer, if 
there ever was one — all fire and air, her song and soul 
alike devoted to liberty, aspiration, and ethereal love. 
A poet, her masculine complement, whose name is rich 
with the added glory of her renown, represents the 
antiquity of his race by study of mediaeval themes, and 
exhibits to the modern lover, noble, statesman, thinker, 
priest, their prototypes in ages long gone by ; he con- 
stantly exalts passion above reason, while reasoning 
himself, withal, in the too curious fashion of the 
present day; again, he is the exponent of what dra- 
matic spirit is still left to England, — that of psycho- 
logical analysis, which turns the human heart inside 
out, judging it not from outward action, in the manner 
of the early, simply objective masters of the stage. 



RECENT BRITISH TASTE. 



31 



Youngest and latest, we find a phenomenal genius, 
the extreme product of the time, carrying its artistic 
and spiritual features to that excess which foretokens 
exhaustion ; possessed of unprecedented control over 
the rhythm and assonance of English poetry; in the 
purpose and structure of his early verse to be studied 
as a force of expression carried to its furthest limits, 
but in his mature, dramatic work exhibiting signs of 
a reaction or transformation which surely is even now 
at hand. 

For that the years of transition are near an, end, 
and that, in England and America, a creative poetic 
literature, adapted to the new order of thought and 
the new aspirations of humanity, will speedily grow 
into form, I believe to be evident wherever our com- 
mon tongue is the language of imaginative expres- 
sion. The idyllic philosophy in which Wordsworth 
took refuge from the cant and melodrama of his 
predecessors has fulfilled its immediate mission ; the 
art which was born with Keats, and found its perfect 
work in Tennyson, already seems faultily faultless and 
over-refined. A craving for more dramatic, sponta- 
neous utterance is prevalent with the new generation. 
There is an instinct that to interpret the hearts and 
souls of men and women is the poet's highest func- 
tion ; a disposition to throw aside precedents, — to 
study life, dialect, and feeling, as our painters study 
landscape, out of doors and at first hand. Con- 
sidered as the floating land-drift of a new possession, 
even careless and faulty work after this method is 
eagerly received ; although in England, so surfeited of 
the past and filled with vague desire, the faculty to 
discriminate between the richer and poorer fabric 
seems blunted and sensational ; experimental novel- 



Swinburne. 



A new dis- 
pensation. 



The 

dramatic 
instinct 
revived. 



British taste 
siibordinate 
to love of 
novelty. 



32 



THE PERIOD. 



The future. 



ties are set above the most admirable compositions 
in a manner already familiar ; just as an uncouth carv- 
ing or piece of foreign lacquer-work is more prized 
than an exquisite specimen of domestic art, because it 
is strange and breathes some unknown, spicy fragrance 
of a new-found clime. The transition period, doubt- 
less, will be prolonged by the ceaseless progress of 
the scientific revolution, occupying men's imaginations 
and constantly readjusting the basis of language and 
illustration. Erelong some new Lucretius may come 
to reinterpret the nature of things, confirming many 
of the ancient prophecies, and substituting for the 
wonder of the remainder the still more wondrous tes- 
timony of the lens, the laboratory, and the millennial 
rocks. The old men of the Jewish captivity wept with 
a loud voice when they saw the foundations of the 
new temple, because its glory in their eyes, in com- 
parison with that builded by Solomon, was as nothing ; 
but the prophet assured them that the Desire of all 
nations should come, and that the glory of the latter 
house should be greater than of the former. But I do 
not endeavor to anticipate the future of English song. 
It may be lowlier or loftier than now, but certainly 
it will show a change, and my faith in the reality 
of progress is broad enough to include the field of 
poetic art. 



CHAPTER II. 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



I. 

LISTENING to the concert of modern song, a 
critical ear detects the notes of one voice which 
possesses a distinct quality and is always at its owner's 
command. Landor was never mastered by his period, 
though still in harmony with it ; in short, he was not 
a discordant, but an independent, singer. He was the 
pioneer of the late English school ; and among recent 
poets, though far from being the greatest in achieve- 
ment, was the most self-reliant, the most versatile, and 
one of the most imaginative. In the enjoyment of 
his varied writings, we are chiefly impressed by their 
constant exhibition of mental prowess, and everywhere 
confronted with an eager and incomparable intellect. 

Last of all to captivate the judgment of the laity, and 
somewhat lacking, it may be, in sympathetic quality of 
tone, Landor is, first of all, a poet for poets, of clear 
vision and assured utterance throughout the Victo- 
rian Year. His station resembles that of a bulkhead 
defending the sea-wall of some lasting structure, — a 
mole or pier, built out from tuneful, grove-shaded Ar- 
cadian shores. He stretches far into the channel along 
which the tides of literary fashion have ebbed and 
flowed. Other poets, leading or following the change- 
ful current, often appear to leave him behind; but 



Landor a 
pioneer of 
the recent 
school. 



A poet for 
poets. 



Intellectual 
and self- 



34 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



Born in 
IVarwick, 
Jan. 30, 
*775- 



His pro- 
longed 



His method 
Victorian. 



often find themselves again where he looms, unchanged 
and dauntless, wearing a lighted beacon at his head. 

Why, among Victorian poets, do I first mention this 
one, — who was born under George III. • who ban- 
died epithets with Byron, was the life-long friend of 
Southey, — the contemporary, likewise, in their prime, 
of Wordsworth, Scott, and Coleridge ; in whose matu- 
rity occurred the swift and shining transits of Keats 
and Shelley, like the flights of shooting-stars ; whose 
most imposing poem was given to the world at a 
date earlier than the first consulate of Napoleon ; 
who lived, from the times of Warton and Pye, to see 
three successive laureates renew the freshness of Eng- 
land's faded coronal, while he sang aloof and took 
no care ? Because, more truly than another declared 
of himself, he stood among these, but not of them ; 
greater or less, but different, and with the difference 
of a time then yet to follow. His style, thought, and 
versatility were Victorian rather than Georgian ; they 
are now seen to belong to that school of which Tenny- 
son is by eminence the representative. So far as his 
manner was anything save his own, it was that of 
recent years ; let us say, instead, that the popular 
method constantly approached Landor's until the epoch 
of his death, — and he died but even now, when it 
is on the point of yielding to something, we know not 
what. He not only lived to see the reflection and 
naturalism of Wordsworth produce fatigue, but to the 
borders of a reaction from that finesse and technical 
perfection which succeeded. His influence scarcely 
yet has grown to reputation, by communication from 
the select few to the receptive many, though he has 
always stood, unwittingly, at the head of a normal 
school, teaching the teachers. Passages are easily 



PROLONGED AND EMINENT CAREER. 



35 



traceable where his art, at least, has been followed by 
poets who themselves have each a host of imitators. 
He may not have been the cause of certain phe- 
nomena \ they may have sprung from the tendency 
of the age, — if so, he was the first to catch the ten- 
dency. Despite his appreciation of the antique, his 
genius found daily excitants in new discovery, action, 
and thought ; he never reached that senility to which 
earlier modes and generations seem the better, but 
was .first to welcome progress, and thoroughly up with 
the times. The larger portion of his work saw print 
long after Tennyson began to compose, and his epic, 
tragedies, and miscellaneous poems were not brought 
together, in a single volume, until 1837, — a date with- 
in five years of the laureate's first collective edition. 
Hence, while it is hard to confine him to a single 
period, he is a tall and reverend landmark of the one 
under review; and the day has come for measuring 
him as a poet of that time, whatever he may have 
been in any other. Nor is he to be observed as an 
eccentric and curious spectacle, but as a distinguished 
figure among the best. As an artist he was, like a 
maple, swift of development, but strong to hold it as 
an elm or oak ; while many poets have done their 
best work under thirty, and ten years after have been 
old or dead, the very noontide of Landor's faculties 
was later than his fiftieth year. We could not regard 
him as a tyro, had he died, like Keats, at twenty-five, 
nor as a jaded old man, dying, as he did, at ninety ; 
for he was as conservative in youth as he ever grew 
to be, and as fiery and forward-looking in age as in 
youth. He attained the summit early, and moved 
along an elevated plateau, forbearing as he grew older 
to descend the further side, and at death flung off 



Landor's 
retention of 
creative 
power. 



36 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



Sustained 
equality. 



Intellectual 
range. 



Univer- 
sality. 



somewhere into the ether, still facing the daybreak 
and worshipped by many rising stars. 

Were it not for this poet's sustained equality with 
himself, we should be unable here to write of his ca- 
reer of seventy years, filled with literary recreations, 
each the companion of its predecessor, and all his 
own. Otherwise, in considering his works, we should 
have to review the history of that period, — as one 
who writes, for example, the life of Voltaire, must 
write the history of the eighteenth century. Landor's 
volumes not only touch upon the whole procession of 
those seventy years, with keen intuitive treatment of 
their important events, but go further, and almost 
cover the range of human action and thought. In this 
respect I find no such man of our time. A writer 
of dialogues, he subjects affairs to the scrutiny of a 
modern journalist; but his newspaper has every age 
for its date of issue, and the history of the world 
supplies it with local incident. 

What is there in the air of Warwickshire to breed 
such men ? For he was born by Shakespeare's stream, 
and verily inhaled something of the master's spirit at 
his birth. Once, in the flush of conscious power, he 
sang of himself, — 

" I drank of Avon too, a dangerous draught, 
That roused within the feverish thirst of song." 

Lowell has said of him, that, "excepting Shake- 
speare, no other writer has furnished us with so many 
delicate aphorisms of human nature " ; and we may 
add that he is also noticeable for universality of con- 
templation and the objective treatment of stately 
themes. In literature, his range is unequalled by that 
of Coleridge, who was so opulent and suggestive; in 



HIS UNIVERSALITY. 



37 



philosophy, history, and art, Goethe is not wiser or 
more imaginative, though often more calm and great ; 
in learning, the department of science excepted, no 
writer since Milton has been more thoroughly equipped. 
We place Landor, who was greater, even, as a prose- 
writer, among the foremost poets, because it was the 
poet within the man that made him great; his poetry 
belongs to a high order of that art, while his prose, 
though strictly prosaic in form, — he was too fine an 
artist to have it otherwise, — is more imaginative than 
other men's verses. Radically a poet, he ranks among 
the best essayists of his time ; and he shares this dis- 
tinction in common with Milton, Coleridge, Emerson, 
and other poets, in various eras, who have been intel- 
lectual students and thinkers. None but sentimental- 
ists and dilettanti confuse their prose and verse, — 
tricking out the former with a cheap gloss of rhetoric, 
or the false and effeminate jingle of a bastard rhythm. 

I have hinted, already, that his works are deficient 
in that broad human sympathy through which Shake- 
speare has found his way to the highest and lowest 
understandings, — just as the cloud seems to one a 
temple, to another a continent, to the child a fairy- 
palace, but is dazzling and glorious to all. Landor 
belonged, in spite of himself, to the Parnassian aris- 
tocracy; was, as has been said, a poet for poets, and 
one who personally impressed the finest organizations. 
Consider the names of those who, having met him and 
known his works, perceived in him something great 
and worshipful. His nearest friends or admirers were 
Southey, Wordsworth, Hunt, Milnes, Armitage Brown ; 
the philosophers, Emerson and Carlyle ; such men of 
letters as Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, Forster, Julius and 
Francis Hare; the bluff old philologist, Samuel Parr; 



Prose and 
verse. Cp. 
" Poets of 
Amer- 
ica' 1 ' 1 ; pp 
327, 373- 



His work 
addressed to 
noble minds. 



38 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



The law tf 
sympathy. 



the fair and discerning Blessington ; Napier, the sol- 
dier and historian ; Elizabeth and Robert Browning, 
the most subtile and extreme of poets, and, in the 
sunrise of his life, the youngest, Algernon Swinburne; 
among the rest, note Dickens, who found so much 
that was rare and undaunted in the man : — I am 
almost persuaded to withdraw my reservation ! True, 
Landor lived long: in seventy years one makes and 
loses many votaries and friends ; but such an artist, 
who, whether as poet or man, could win and retain 
the affection and admiration, despite his thousand 
caprices, of so many delicate natures, varying among 
themselves in temperament and opinion, must indeed 
possess a many-sided greatness. Nor is the definition 
of sympathetic quality restricted to that which touches 
the popular heart. There are persons who might 
read without emotion much of Dickens's sentiment 
and humor, yet would feel every fibre respond to the 
exquisite beauty of Landor's "Pericles and Aspasia"; 
— persons whom only the purest idealism can strongly 
affect. But this is human also. Shall not the wise, 
as well as the witless, have their poets? There is an 
idea current that art is natural only when it appeals to 
the masses, or awakens the simple, untutored emotions 
of humble life. In truth, the greater should include 
the less ; the finer, if need be, the coarse ; the composer 
of a symphony has, we trust, melody enough at his 
command. Stage presentation has done much to popu- 
larize Shakespeare ; his plays, moreover, are relished 
for their stories, as "Pilgrim's Progress " and "Gulliver's 
Travels " are devoured by children without a thought of 
the theology of the one or the measureless satire of 
the other. Landor's work has no such vantage-ground, 
and much of it is "caviare to the general"; but he is 



HIS JUVENILE POEMS. 



39 



none the less human, in that he is the poet's poet, 
the artist's artist, the delight of high, heroic souls. 

When nineteen years old, in 1795, ne printed his first 
book, — a rhymed satire upon the Oxford dons, — and 
his muse never lef| him till he died in 1864, lacking 
four months only of his ninetieth birthday. Seventy 
years of literary life, of which the noteworthy portion 
may be reckoned from the appearance of " Gebir" in 
1798, to that of the later series of the "Hellenics" in 
1847 : since, although compositions dating the very year 
of his death exhibit no falling off, and his faculty was 
vigorous to the end, he produced no important work 
subsequent to the one last mentioned. His collections 
of later poems and essays are of a miscellaneous or 
fragmentary sort, and, though abounding in beautiful 
and characteristic material, exhibit many trifles which 
add nothing to his fame. In reviewing his career, let 
us first look at his poetry, which contains the key to 
his genius and aspirations. 

His earliest verses, like those of Shelley and Byron, 
have a stilted, academic flavor, and, though witty enough, 
were instigated by youthful conceit and abhorrence of 
conventional authority. They were followed by a red- 
hot political satire, in the metre and diction of Pope. 
Thus far, nothing remarkable for a boy of nineteen : 
merely an illustration of the law that " nearly all young 
poets .... write old." 1 The great poetic revival had 



1 Not having a copy of Landor's first book, I have taken the 
description, given in the side-note, from Forster's biography, but 
am informed by Mr. Swinburne that Poems, English and Latin, is 
the correct title. My correspondent adds : " It contains a good 
deal besides satire, though that is perhaps its best part. The 
Epistle to Lord Stanhope, which I have also, is, I think, some- 
thing remarkable for a boy of nineteen, — singularly polished and 
vigorous." 



His first 
book: " The 
Poems of 

W. s.Lr 

1795- 



"A Moral 
Epistle to 
Earl Stan- 



40 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



"Gebir; 
1798. 



not begun. Burns was still almost unknown ; Cowper 
very faintly heard ; fledglings tried their wings in the 
direction of Pope, Warton, and Gray. The art of verse, 
the creation of beauty for its own sake or for that of 
imaginative expression, at first took small hold upon 
Landor. Considering the era, it is wonderful how 
soon the converse of this was true. Three years to a 
young man are more than three times three in after- 
life ; but never was there a swifter stride made than 
from Landor's prentice-work to Gebir, which dis- 
played his royal poetic genius in full robes. Where 
now be his politics and polemics ? Henceforth his 
verse, for the most part, is wedded to pure beauty, and 
prose becomes the vehicle of his critical or controver- 
sial thought. In "Gebir," art, treatment, imagination, 
are everything ; argument very little ; the story is of a 
remote, Oriental nature, a cord upon which he strings 
his extraordinary language, imagery, and versification. 
The structure is noble in the main, though chargeable, 
like Tennyson's earlier poetry, with vagueness here and 
there ; the diction is majestic and sonorous, and its 
progress is specially marked by sudden, almost ran- 
dom, outbursts of lofty song. I do not hesitate to say 
that this epic, as poetry, and as a marvelous produc- 
tion for the period and for Landor's twenty-two years, 
stands next to that renowned and unrivaled torso, com- 
posed so long afterward, the " Hyperion " of John Keats. 
It was the prototype of our modern formation, cropping 
out a great distance in advance. To every young poet 
who has yet his art to learn, I would say — do not 
overlook "Gebir," this strangely modern poem, which, 
though seventy-five years old, has so much of Tenny- 
son's finish, of Arnold's objectivity, and the romance 
of Morris and Keats. Forster, Landor's biographer, 



gebir: 



41 



says that it is now unknown. When was it ever known? 
The first edition had little sale ; a sumptuous later 
issue, including the Latin translation "Gebirus," had 
still less. But the poets found it out ; it was the 
envy of Byron • the despair of Southey, who could 
appreciate, if he could not create ; the bosom-com- 
panion of Shelley, to the last; nor can I doubt that, 
directly and indirectly, it had much to do with the 
inception and development of the Victorian School. 

In recalling Landor's writings, prose and verse, I 
make no specific allusion to the minor pieces which 
he composed from time to time, careless about their 
reception, easily satisfied with the expression of his 
latest mood. A catalogue of them, extending from the 
beginning to the middle of our century, lies before 
me : The Phocceans, an unfinished epic ; The Charitable 
Dowager, a comedy that never saw the light; various 
Icelandic poems, all save one of which are wisely 
omitted from his collected works ; epigrams, letters, 
critiques, and what not ; often mere Sibylline leaves, 
— sometimes put forth in obscurest pamphlet-form, 
sometimes elaborate with revision and costly with the 
utmost resources of the press ; making little mark at 
the time, but all idiosyncratic, Landorian, though closer 
scrutiny of them need not detain us here. His liter- 
ary life was like the firmament, whose darkest openings 
are interspersed with scattered stars, but only the 
luminous, superior constellations herewith invite our 
regard. His first dramatic effort, made after a stormy 
and ill-regulated experience of fifteen years, was the 
gloomy but magnificent tragedy of Count Julian. 
Like Shelley's "Cenci," Byron's "Manfred," and Cole- 
ridge's adaptation of " Wallenstein," it is a dramatic 
poem rather than a stage-drama of the available kind. 



Miscellane- 
ous produc- 
tions. 



Dramatic 
work. 

" Count Ju- 
lian" 1 812. 



42 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



The " Tril- 
ogy" 

1839-40. 



The "Hel- 
lenics" 
1847. 



Compared with kindred productions of the time, how- 
ever, it stands like the " Prometheus " among classic 
plays ; and as an exposition of dramatic force, a con- 
ception of the highest manhood in the most heroic 
and mournful attitude, — as a presentment of impas- 
sioned language, pathetic sentiment, and stern resolve, 
— it is an impressive and undying poem. Landor's 
career must be measured by Olympiads or lustra, not 
by years ; he was thirty-five when he took this fearless 
dramatic flight, and then, save for occasional fragmen- 
tary scenes, his special faculty remained unused until 
he was nearly sixty-five, in 1839-40, at which date 
he composed and published his Trilogy. The three 
plays thus grouped — "Andrea of Hungary," " Gio- 
vanna of Naples," and " Fra Rupert " — are, except- 
ing the one previously mentioned, the only extended 
dramatic poems which he has left us. Though rarely 
so imaginative and statuesque as " Count Julian," they 
are better adapted in action, and show no decline of 
power. Eetween the one and the others occurred the 
marvellous prose period of Landor's career, by which 
he first became generally known and upon which so 
largely rests his fame. From 1824 to 1837, — these 
thirteen years embrace the interval during which was 
written the most comprehensive and delightful prose 
in the English tongue, upon whose every page is 
stamped the patent of the author as a sage and poet. 
One is more nearly drawn to Landor — with the 
affection which all lovers of beauty, pure and simple, 
feel for the poet — by the Hellenics than by any 
other portion of his metrical work. The volume bear- 
ing that name was written when he was well past the 
Scriptural limit of life, at the age of seventy-two, and 
published in 1847. It consisted of translations from 



THE 'HELLENICS: 



43 



his own Idyllia Heroica : Latin poems (many of them 
composed and printed forty years earlier) which were 
finally collected and revised for publication in a little 
volume, Poemata et Inscriptiones, which appeared, I 
think, in 1846. Of Landor's aptitude and passion for 
writing in Latin verse I shall speak hereafter. His 
sin in this respect (if it be a sin), 1 is amply expiated 
by the surpassing beauty of " Corythus," the " Last of 
Ulysses," and other translations from the "Idyllia." 
Still more exquisite, if possible, are the fifteen idyls, 
also called Hellenics, which previously had been col- 
lected in the standard octavo edition of his works, 
edited by Julius Hare and John Forster, and printed 
in 1846. During the past thirty years a taste for 
experimenting with classical themes has seized upon 
many a British poet, and numberless fine studies have 
been the result, from the " CEnone " and " Tithonus " 
of the laureate to more extended pieces, — like the 
"Andromeda" of Kingsley, and Swinburne's "Ata- 
lanta in Calydon." But to Landor, from his youth, 
the antique loveliness was a familiar atmosphere, in 
which he dwelt and had his being with a contentment 
so natural that he scarcely perceived it was not com- 
mon to others, or thought to avail himself of it in 
the way of metrical art. Finding that people could 
not, or would not, read the " Idyllia," he was led to 
translate them' into English verse ; and of all the 
classical pieces in our language, his own, taken as 
a whole, are the most varied, natural, simple, least 
affected with foreign forms : — 

" Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan ! 
Piercing sweet by the river." 



1 See remarks upon Swinburne's Greek and Latin verse, etc., 
in Chapter XI. of this book. 



"Poemata 
et Inscrip- 
tiones." 



44 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



Landor a 
faultless 
and spon- 
taneous 
artist. 



Generally they are idyllic, and after the Sicilian 
school. Now and then some Homeric epithets ap- 
pear; as where he speaks of "full fifty slant-browed, 
kingly-hearted swine," — but such examples are un- 
common. For the most part the Greek manner and 
feeling are veritably translated. " The Hamadryad " 
is universally known, — possessed of delicious melody 
and pathos which commend it to the multitude : I am 
not sure that any other ancient story, so tranquilly 
and beautifully told, is in our treasury of English 
song. The overture to the first of the " Hellenics " 
suggests the charm and purpose of them all : — 

" Who will away to Athens with me ? who 
Loves choral songs and maidens crowned with flowers, 
Unenvious? mount the pinnace; hoist the sail." 

That splendid apostrophe to liberty, the fifteenth 
of the first series, beginning, 

" We are what suns and winds and waters make us ; 
The mountains are our sponsors, and the rills 
Fashion and win their nursling with their smiles," 

recalls the Hellenic spirit from its grave, and brings 
these antique creations within the range of modern 
thought and sympathy. In fine, it must be acknowl- 
edged that for tender grace, sunlight, healthfulness, 
these idyls are fresh beyond comparison, the inspira- 
tion of immortal youth. Never have withered hands 
more bravely swept the lyre. 

Landor, as I have said, was noticeable among recent 
poets as an artist, and the earliest to revive the par- 
tially forgotten elegance of English verse. Whoever 
considers the metrical product of our era must con- 
stantly bear in mind the stress laid upon the technics 
of the poet's calling. No shiftlessness has been tol- 



A FAULTLESS AND PROLIFIC ARTIST. 



45 



erated, and Landor was the first to honor his work 
with all the finish that a delicate ear and faultless 
touch could bestow upon it. But in observing the 
perfection of the "Hellenics," for example, you dis- 
cern at a glance that it is only what was natural to 
him and reached by the first intention • that he falsi- 
fied the distich with reference to easy writing and 
hard reading, and composed admirably at first draught. 
By way of contrast, one sees that much of the famous 
poetry of the day has been carved with pains, "labo- 
rious, orient ivory, sphere in sphere." The morning 
grandeur of " Count Julian " and " Gebir," and the 
latter-day grace of Landor's idyls and lyrics, came to 
their author as he went along. A poor workman 
blames his tools ; but he was so truly an artist and 
poet, that he took the nearest instrument which sug- 
gested itself, and wrought out his conceptions to his 
own satisfaction, — somewhat too careless, it must be 
owned, whether others relished them or not. At 
certain times, from the accident of study and early 
training, his thoughts ran as freely in Latin numbers 
as in English; and, without considering the utter 
uselessness of such labor, he persisted in writing 
Latin verses, to the alternate amusement and indig- 
nation of his friends ; always quite at ease in either 
language, strong, melodious, and full of humor, — 
"strength's rich superfluity." The famous shell-pas- 
sage in "Gebir" was written first in Latin, and more 
musically than its translation. Compare the latter 
with the counterpart in Wordsworth's "Excursion," 
and determine, — not which of the two poets had the 
profounder nature, — but which was Apollo's darling 
and the more attractively endowed. Landor's blank 
verse, the test of an English singer, is like nothing 



His blank 
verse. 



46 



WALTER SAVAGE LAND OR. 



Lyrical 
afflue7ice. 



before it; but that of Tennyson and his followers 
resembles it, by adoption and development. Like 
the best pentameter of the present day, it is akin to 
Milton's ; affected, like his, by classical influence, 
but rather of the Greek than the Latin ; more closely 
assimilated to the genius of our tongue and with 
fewer inversions ; terse, yet fluent, assonant, harmo- 
nious. Grace and nobility are its prominent char- 
acteristics. 

Landor's affluence embarrassed him. He had noth- 
ing costive in his nature, — disdained the tricks of 
smaller men, and could not spend days upon a son- 
net; it must come at once, and perfect, or not at all. 
He was a Fortunatus, and, because the ten pieces of 
gold were always by him, delayed to bring together 
a store of poetry for his own renown. This was one 
secret of his leaving so few extended compositions ; 
other reasons will be named hereafter ; meantime it is 
certain that he never hoarded and fondled his qua- 
trains, and that there was no waste, the supply being 
infinite. The minor lyrics, epigrams, fragments, — 
thrown off during his capricious life, in which every 
mood was indulged to the full and every lot experi- 
enced, — are numberless ; sometimes frivolous enough, 
biting and spleenful, yet bearing the mark of a deli- 
cate hand ; often, like " Rose Aylmer," possessed of 
an ethereal pathos, a dying fall, upon which poets 
have lived for weeks and which haunt the soul for- 
ever. Ideality belonged to Landor throughout life ; 
for seventy years he reminds one of the girl in the 
fairy-tale, who could not speak without dropping 
pearls and diamonds. A volume might be made of 
the lyrical gems with which even his prose writings 
are interspersed. He had an aptitude for the largest 



HIS DRAMATIC FACULTY. 



47 



and smallest work, the true Shakespearian range ; and 
could make anything in poetry, from the posy of a 
ring to the chronicle of its most heroic wearer. 

While Landor's art is thus varied and original, his 
strongest hold — the natural bent of his imagination 
— lay, as I have suggested, in the direction of the 
drama. This he himself felt and often expressed ; 
yet his dramatic works are only enough to show what 
things he might have accomplished, under the favor- 
able conditions of a sympathetic age. Few modern 
poets have done much more. Procter, Taylor, Bed- 
does, Browning, — his dramatic compeers can almost 
be numbered on the fingers of one hand. I am not 
speaking of the playwrights. Had he written many 
dramas, doubtless they would have been of the Eliz- 
abethan style : objective rather than subjective ; their 
personages distinct in manner, language, and action, 
though not brought under the close psychological 
analysis which is a feature of our modern school. 
We have substituted the novel for the drama, yet, 
were Shakespeare now alive, he might write novels — 
and he might not. Possibly, like Landor, he would 
be repelled by the mummery of the plot, which in the 
novel must be so much more minutely developed than 
in a succession of stage-scenes. Landor might have 
constructed a grand historical romance, or a respect- 
able novel, but he never attempted either. Had the 
stage demanded and recompensed the labor of the 
best minds, he would have written plays, doing even 
the " business " well ; for he had the intellect and 
faculty, and touched nothing without adorning it. As 
it was, the plot seemed, in his view, given up to char- 
latans and hacks ; he had small patience with it, 
because, not writing in regular course for the theatre, 



Dramatic 

faculty. 



48 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



His restric- 
tions. 



the framework of a drama did not come from him 
spontaneously. His tragedies already named, and 
various fragments, — "Ippolito di Este," "Ines de 
Castro," " The Cenci," and " Cleopatra," — are to be 
regarded as dramatic studies, and are replete with 
evidences of inspiration and tragic power. Some- 
times a passage like this, from " Fra Rupert," has the 
strength and fire of Webster, in "The Duchess of 
Main": — 



Worst of it all 



The queen's 



They stifled her 



{< Stephen. 

Is the queen's death. 
Maxim in- 
Step hen. 

With her own pillow. 
Maximin. Who says that? 

Stephen. The man 

Runs wild who did it, through the streets, and howls it, 

Then imitates her voice, and softly sobs, 

' Lay me in Santa Chiara.'' " 

We say that Landor was an independent singer, 
but once more the inevitable law obtains. He was 
restricted by his period, which afforded him neither 
poetical themes most suited to his intellect, nor the 
method of expression in which he could attain a full 
development. He had little outside stimulus to fre- 
quent work. In his youth the serial market was 
limited to The Gentleman's Magazine and the preten- 
tious quarterly reviews. His early poems did not sell : 
they were in advance of the contemporary demand. 
In poetry, let us confess that he fell short of his own 
standard, — never so well defined as in " The Pen- 
tameron " : " Amplitude of dimensions is requisite to 
constitute the greatness of a poet, besides his sym- 
metry of form and his richness of decoration 

We may write little things well, and accumulate one 



HIS PROSE WRITINGS. 



49 



upon another; but never will any justly be called a 
great poet, unless he has treated a great subject wor- 
thily A throne is not built of bird's-nests, nor 

do a thousand reeds make a trumpet." The one 
great want of many a master-mind oppressed him, — 
lack of theme. Better fitted to study things at a dis- 
tance, always an idealist and dreaming of some large 
achievement, Landor, with his imaginative force un- 
met by any commensurate task, wandered like "blind 
Orion, hungry for the morn." Or, like that other 
hapless giant, he groped right and left, but needed 
a guide to direct his strong arms to the pillars, that 
he might bow himself indeed and put forth all his 
powers. 

How great these were the world had never known, 
were it not for that interlude of prose composition 
which occupied a portion of the years between his 
early and later work. From youth his letters, often 
essays and reviews in themselves, to his selectest 
intellectual companions, exhibit him as a splendid 
artist in prose and a learned and accurate thinker. 
He had been drinking the wine of life, reading, re- 



flecting, studying "cities of men 



and climates, 



councils, governments," at Tours, Como, Pisa, Flor- 
ence, Bath; and, at the age of forty-five or forty-six, 
with every faculty matured, he became suddenly aware 
of the fitness of written dialogue as the vehicle of 
his conceptions, and for the exercise of that dra- 
matic tendency which had thus far found no practi- 
cable outlet. Forster has pointed out that this form 
of literature was suited alike to his strength, dogma- 
tism, and variety of mood. The idea, once conceived, 
was realized with his usual impetuosity. It swelled 
and swelled, drawing up the thought and observation 



Lack of 
theme. 



Greatness as 
a writer of 
English 
prose. 



50 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



The " Im- 
agmary 
Conversa- 
tions,'''' 1824. 



of a lifetime ; in two years the first and second books 
of Imaginary Conversations were given to the world, 
and in four more, six volumes in all had been com- 
pleted. For the first time the English people were 
dazzled and affected by this author's genius ; the 
books were a success ; and all citizens of the republic 
of letters discovered, what a few choice spirits had 
known before, that Landor was their peer and master. 

It is needless to eulogize the series of "Imaginary 
Conversations," — to which the poet kept adding, as 
the fancy seized him, until the year of his decease, 
within the memory of us all. They have passed into 
literature, and their influence and charm are undying. 
They are an encyclopaedia, a panoramic museum, a 
perpetual drama, a changeful world of fancy, char- 
acter, and action. Their learning covers languages, 
histories, inventions j their thought discerns and an- 
alyzes literature, art, poetry, philosophy, manners, life, 
government, religion, — everything to which human 
faculties have applied themselves, which eye has seen, 
ear has heard, or the heart of man conceived. Their 
personages are as noble as those of Sophocles, as 
sage and famous as Plutarch's, as varied as those of 
Shakespeare himself : comprising poets, wits, orators, 
soldiers, statesmen, monarchs, fair women and brave 
men. Through them all, among them all, breathes the 
spirit of Landor, and above them waves his compel- 
ling wand. Where his subjectivity becomes apparent, 
it is in a serene and elevated mood ; for he is trav- 
ersing the realm of the ideal, his better angel rules the 
hour, and the man is transfigured in the magician and 
poet. 

Paulo majora canamus. From the exhaustless re- 
sources of Landor's imagination, he was furthermore 



A TRINITY OF PROSE-POEMS. 



51 



enabled to construct a trinity of prose-poems, not frag- 
mentary episodes or dialogues, but round and perfect 
compositions, — each of them finished and artistic in 
the extreme degree. The Citation of Shakespeare, the 
Pentameron, and Pericles and Aspasia depict England, 
Italy, and Greece at their renowned and character- 
istic periods : the greenwood and castle-halls of Eng- 
land, the villas and cloisters of Italy, the sky and 
marbles of ancient Greece ; the pedantry and poetry 
of the first, the mysticism of the second, the deathless 
grace and passion of Athens at her prime. Of "The 
Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare, 
etc., etc., Touching Deer-Stealing," I can but repeat 
what Charles Lamb said, and all that need here be 
said of it, — that only two men could have written 
it, he who wrote it, and the man it was written on. 
It can only be judged by reading, for there is nothing 
resembling it in any tongue. "The Pentameron" (of 
Boccaccio and Petrarca) was the last in date of 
these unique conceptions, and the favorite of Hunt, 
Crabb Robinson, Disraeli ; a mediaeval reproduction, 
the tone of which — while always in keeping with 
itself — is so different from that of the " Citation," 
that one would think it done by another hand, if any 
other hand were capable of doing it. Even to those 
who differ with its estimation of Dante, its learning, 
fidelity, and picturesqueness seem admirable beyond 
comparison. The highest luxury of a sensitive, cul- 
tured mind is the perusal of a work like this. Mrs. 
Browning found some of its pages too delicious to 
turn over. Yet this study had been preceded by the 
" Pericles and Aspasia," which, as an exhibition of 
intellectual beauty, may be termed the masterpiece of 
Landor's whole career. 



A trinity of 
prose-poems. 



" Citation of 
Shake- 
speare" 
1834- 



" The Pen- 
tameron" 
1837- 



52 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



" Pericles 
and A sta- 
sia," 1836. 



Critics are not wanting who maintain " Pericles and 
Aspasia" to be the purest creation of sustained art in 
English prose. It is absolutely devoid of such affec- 
tations as mark the romances and treatises of Sidney, 
Browne, and many famous writers of the early and 
middle periods ; and to " The Vicar of Wakefield," and 
other classics of a time nearer our own, it bears the 
relation of a drama to an eclogue, or that of a sym- 
phony to some sweet and favorite air. What flawless 
English ! what vivid scenery and movement ! Com- 
posed without a reference-book, it is accurate in schol- 
arship, free from inconsistencies as Becker's "Chari- 
cles " ; nevertheless, the action is modern, as that of 
every golden era must appear ; the personages, whether 
indicated lightly or at full length, are living human 
beings before our eyes. As all sculpture is included 
in the Apollo Belvedere, so all Greek life, sunshine, 
air, sentiment, contribute to these eloquent epistles. 
A rare imagination is required for such a work. While 
comparable with nothing but itself, it leaves behind it 
the flavor of some " Midsummer Night's Dream " or 
"Winter's Tale," maugre the unreality and anachro- 
nisms. Landor's dainty madrigals are scattered through- 
out, coming in like bird-songs upon the sprightly or 
philosophical Athenian converse: here we find "Arte- 
midora " and " Aglae " ; here, too, is the splendid 
fragment of "Agamemnon." How vividly Alcibiades, 
Anaxagoras, Socrates, Pericles, Aspasia, appear before 
us : the noonday grace and glory, the indoor banquet 
and intellectual feast ! We exclaim, not only : What 
rulers ! what poets and heroes ! but — What children 
of light ! what laurelled heads ! what lovers — what 
passionate hearts! How modern, how intense, how 
human! what beauty, what delicacy, what fire! We 



PERICLES AND ASP ASIA: 



53 



penetrate the love of high-bred men and women : nobles 
by nature and rank; — surely finer subjects for realistic 
treatment than the boor and the drudge. Where both 
are equally natural, I would rather contemplate a 
horse or a falcon, than the newt and the toad. Thus 
far, I am sure, one may carry the law of aristocracy in 
art. The people of this book are brave, wise, and 
beautiful, or at least fitly adapted: some unhappy, — 
others, under whatsoever misfortune, enraptured, be- 
cause loving and beloved. Never were women more 
tenderly depicted. Aspasia, with all her love of glory, 
confesses: "You men often talk of glorious death, of 
death met bravely for your country; I too have been 
warmed by the bright idea in oratory and poetry : but 
ah ! my dear Pericles ! I would rather read it on an 
ancient tomb than a recent one." Again, in the midst 
of their splendor and luxury, she exclaims: "When 
the war is over, as surely it must be in another year, 
let us sail among the islands .^Egean and be as young 
as ever ! " Just before the death of Pericles by the 
plague, amid thickening calamities, they write trage- 
dies and study letters and art. All is heroic and 
natural : they turn from grand achievements to the 
delights of intellect and affection. Where is another 
picture so elevating as this? Fame, power, luxury, are 
forgotten in the sympathy and glorious communion of 
kindred souls. Where is one so fitted to reconcile us 
with death, — the end of all such communings, • — the 
common lot, from which even these beautiful ideals 
are not exempt ? Ay, their deaths, in the midst of so 
much that made life peerless and worth living, follow 
each other in pathetic, yet not inharmonious succes- 
sion, like the silvery chimings of a timepiece at the 
close of a summer's day. 



Cp. " Poets 

of A mer- 
ica " ; p. 
43o. 



A ristocrat- 
ism in art. 



54 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



Study of 
Lander's 
personal his- 
tory. 



"Pericles and Aspasia" is a Greek temple, with 
frieze and architrave complete. If it be not Athens, 
it is what we love to think Athens must have been, 
in the glory of Pericles' last days. It is a thing of 
beauty for all places and people ; for the deep-read 
man of thought and experience, for the dreamy youth 
or maiden in the farthest Western wilds. The form 
is that of prose, simple and translucent, yet it is a 
poem from beginning to end. I would test the fabric 
of a person's temper by his appreciation of such a 
book. If only one work of an author were given as 
a companion, many would select this : not alone for 
its wisdom, eloquence, and beauty, but for its pathos 
and affection. You can read . it again and again, 
and ever most delightfully. The "Citation" and the 
" Pentameron " must be studied with the scholar's 
anointed eyes, and are sealed to the multitude ; but 
" Pericles and Aspasia " is clear as noonday, a book 
for thinkers, — but a book for lovers also, and should 
be as immortal as the currents which flow between 
young hearts. 

II. 

There has been much confusion of Landor's per- 
sonal history with his writings, and an inclination to 
judge the latter by the former. The benison of Time 
enables us, after the lapse of years, to discriminate 
between the two ; while the punishment of a misgov- 
erned career is that it hinders even the man of genius 
from being justified during his lifetime. However, 
before further consideration of Landor's works, — that 
we may see what bearing the one had on the other, 
and with this intention solely, — let us observe the 
man himself. 



HIS PERSONAL HISTORY AND CHARACTER. 



55 



We need not rehearse the story of his prolonged, 
adventurous life. It was what might be expected of 
such a character, and to speak of the one is to infer 
the other. Frea's address to her liege, in Arnold's 
" Balder Dead," occurs to me as I think of the hoary 
poet. " Odin, thou Whirlwind," he was, forsooth : tem- 
pestuous, swift of will ; an egotist without vanity, but 
equally without reason ; impatient of fools and upstarts ; 
so intellectually proud, that he suspected lesser minds 
of lowering him to their own level, when they honestly 
admired his works ; scornful, yet credulous ; careless 
of his enemies, too often suspicious of his friends ; a 
law unto himself, even to the extreme fulfilment of his 
most erratic impulse ; enamored of liberty, yet not sel- 
dom confounding it with license ; loving the beautiful 
with his whole soul, but satisfied no less with the con- 
scious power of creating than with its exercise. Such 
was Landor, though quite transfigured, I say, when 
absorbed in the process of his art. Every inspired 
artist has a double existence : his " life is twofold," 
and the nobler one is that by which he should be 
judged. 

And yet, our poet's temperament was so extraordi- 
nary that it is no less a study than his productions. 
He was wayward, unrestful, full-veined, impetuous to 
the very end. Nothing but positive inability restrained 
him from gratifying a single passion or caprice. His 
nature was so buoyant that, like the Faun, he forgot 
both pain and pleasure, and had few stings of sorrow 
or regret to guard him from fresh woes and errors. 
As he learned nothing from experience, his life was 
one perpetual series of escapades, — of absurd per- 
plexities at Rugby, Oxford, Llanthony, and in foreign 
lands. Even in art he often seemed like a wind-harp, 



His para- 
doxical tem- 
perament. 



Extraordi- 
nary dispo- 
sition and 
career. 



56 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



Physical 
gifts. 



responding to every breath that stirred his being : a 
superb voice executing voluntaries and improvisations, 
but disinclined to synthetic utterance. He lacked that 
guiding force which is gained only by the wisest disci- 
pline, the most beneficent influences in youth : — under 
such influences this grand character might have been 
strong and perfect, but his fortunes served to lessen 
the completeness of his genius. The author's tradi- 
tional restrictions were wanting in Landor's case. He 
stood first in the entail of a liberal estate, and self- 
control was never imposed upon him. One great gift 
denied to him was the suspicion of his own mortality. 
It has been rightly said that he and his brothers 
came of a race of giants. His physical health and 
strength were so absolute, that no fear of the short- 
ness of life was present to stimulate his ambition. He 
needed, like the imperator, some faithful slave to whis- 
per in his ear, Remember that thou too art mortal ! 
His tendencies never were evil, but in their violence 
illustrated Fourier's theory of the reverse action of 
the noblest passions. More than all else, it was this 
lack of self-restraint that made the infinite difference 
between himself and the great master to whose univer- 
sality of genius his own was most akin. 

Had Landor been poor, had he felt some thorn in 
the flesh — but he was more handicapped at the out- 
set with wealth and health than Wordsworth with 
poverty or Hood with want and disease. Born a 
patrician, his caste was assured, and his actions were 
of that defiant, democratic kind, upon which snobs 
and parvenus dare not venture. He scattered his 
wealth as he chose, and would not let his station 
restrict him from the experiences of the poor. The 
audacious conceptions of novelists were realized in 



HIS UNCONVENTIONALISM. 



57 



his case. It was impossible to make him a conven- 
tional respecter of persons and temporal things. If 
ever a man looked through and through clothes and 
titles, Landor did ; and as for property, — it seemed 
to him impedimenta and perishable stuff. Yet he loved 
luxury, and was uncomfortable when deprived of it. 
Determined, first of all, to live his life, to enjoy and 
develop every gift and passion, he touched life at more 
points than do most men of letters. Possibly he had 
not the self-denial of those exalted devotees, who eat, 
marry, and live for art alone. The lust of the flesh, 
the lust of the eye, and the pride of life were strong 
within him. Here he resembled Byron and Alfieri, — 
to whom he was otherwise related, except that his 
heart was too warm and light for the vulgar misan- 
thropy of the first, and his blood too clean and health- 
ful for the grosser passions of either. 

Trouble bore lightly enough upon a man who so 
readily forgot the actual world, that we find him writ- 
ing Latin idyls just after his first flight from his wife, 
or turning an epigram when his estate was ruined 
forever. Inconstant upon the slightest cause, he yet 
was faithful to certain life-long friends, and, if one 
suffered never so little for his sake, was ready to 
yield life or fortune in return. Such was his feeling 
toward Robert Landor, Forster, Southey, Browning, 
and the great novelist who drew that genial caricature 
by which his likeness is even now most widely known. 
Dickens, who of all men was least fit to pronounce 
judgment upon Landor's work, and cared the least to 
do it, was of all most fit to estimate his strength and 
weakness, his grim and gentle aspects. In " Boy- 
thorn " we hear his laugh rising higher, peal on peal ; 
we almost see his leonine face and lifted brow, the 
3* 



No respecter 
of persons. 



Buoyancy oj 
tempera- 
ment. 



Dickens's 
portrait of 
him in 
" Bleak 
House." 



58 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



A mateur- 
ship to be 
distrusted. 



Art as a 
means of 
subsistence. 



strong upper lip, the clear gray eye, and ineffably 
sweet and winsome smile. We listen to his thousand 
superlatives of affection, compliment, or wrath, and 
know them to be the safety-valves of a nature over- 
charged with " the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, 
the love of love "; of a poet and hero in the extreme, 
who only needed the self-training that with years 
should bring the philosophic mind. 

His prose writings measurably reflect his tempera- 
ment, though he is at special pains to disclaim it. 
His minor epigrams and lyrics go still further in this 
direction, and were the means of working off his sur- 
plus energy of humor, sympathy, or dislike. The mo- 
ment he regarded men and things objectively, he was 
the wisest of his kind ; and some fine instinct mostly 
kept him objective in his poetry, while his personality 
expended itself in acts and conversation. If he sel- 
dom did " a wise thing," he as seldom wrote " a fool- 
ish one." Entering upon his volumes, we are in the 
domain of the pure serene ; and his glorious faculties 
of scholarship and song compensate us for that of 
which his nature had too little and that of which it 
wantoned in excess. 

Many texts could be found in Landor's career for 
an essay upon amateurship in literature or art. As a 
rule, distrust the quality of that product which is not 
the result of legitimate professional labor. Art must 
be followed as a means of subsistence to render its cre- 
ations worthy, to give them a human element. Poetry 
is an unsubstantial worldly support ; but true poets 
have frequently secluded themselves, like Milton, Cow- 
per, and Wordsworth, so that their simple wants were 
supplied ; or, plunging into life, have still made labor 
with the pen — writing for the stage or the press — a 



AMATEURSHIP IN ART. 



59 



means of living, enjoying the pleasure which comes 
from being in harness and from duty squarely per- 
formed. They plume themselves — et ego in Arcadia 
— upon sharing not only the transports, but the drudg- 
ery of the literary guild. Generally, I say, distrust 
writers who come not in by the strait gate, but clamber 
over the wall of amateurship. Literary men, who have 
had both genius and a competence, have so felt this 
that they have insisted upon the uttermost farthing for 
their work, thus maintaining, though at the expense of 
a reputation for avarice, the dignity of the profession, 
and legitimizing their own connection with it. This' 
Landor was never able to do : his writing either was 
not remunerative, because not open to popular sympa- 
thy, or unsympathetic because not remunerative ; at all 
events, the two conditions went together. He began 
to write for the love of it, and was always, perforce, an 
amateur rather than a member of the guild. As he 
grew older, he would have valued a hundred pounds 
earned by his pen more than a thousand received from 
his estate ; but although he estimated properly the 
value of his work, and, thinking others would do the 
same, was always appropriating in advance hypotheti- 
cal earnings to philanthropic ends, he never gained a 
year's subsistence by literature ; and such of his works 
as were not printed at his own expense, with the excep- 
tion of the first two volumes of " Imaginary Conversa- 
tions," entailed losses upon the firms venturing their 
publication. 

But amateurship in Landor's case, enforced or 
chosen, did not become dilettanteism ; on the con- 
trary, it made him finely independent and original. 
His own boast was that he was a "creature who imi- 
tated nobody and whom nobody imitated; the man 



His work 

unremuner- 

ative. 



Landor not 
a dilettante 



6o 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



His love of 
nature. 



who walked through the crowd of poets and prose- 
men, and never was touched by any one's skirts." 
This haughty self-gratulation we cannot allow. No 
human being ever was independent, in this sense. 
Landor in his youth imitated Pope, and afterwards 
made beneficial study of Milton before reaching a 
manner of his own. . Pindar, Theocritus, and Catullus, 
among the ancients, he read so closely that he could 
not but feel the influence of their styles. Yet he 
might justly claim that he had no part in the mere 
fashion of the day, and that he wrote and thought 
independent of those with whom he was on the most 
intimate and coadmiring terms. He often shed tears 
in the passion of his work, and his finest conceptions 
were the most spontaneous, — for his instinct with 
regard to beauty and the canons of literary taste had 
the precision of law itself. His poetic qualities, like 
his acquirements, were of the rare and genuine kind. 
He had a thorough sympathy with nature and a love 
for outdoor life. His biographer, while careful to de- 
tail the quarrels and imbroglios into which his temper 
betrayed him along the course of years, gives us only 
brief and fitful glimpses of his better and prevailing 
mood. Happily, Forster avails himself of Landor's 
letters to fill out his bulky volume, and hence cannot 
wholly conceal the striking poetic qualities of the man. 
Landor knew and loved the sky, the woods, and the 
waters ; a day's journey was but an enjoyable walk 
for him j and he passed half his time roaming over 
the hills, facing the breeze, and composing in the 
open air. It was only, in fact, when quite alone that 
he could be silent enough to work. For trees he 
had a reverential passion. Read his Conversation 
with Pallavicini ; and examine that episode in his life, 



LOVE OF NATURE. 



61 



when he bought and tried to perfect the Welsh estate, 
and would have grown a forest of half a million trees, 
but for his own impracticability and the boorishness 
of the country churls about him. Unlike many re- 
flective poets, however, he never permits landscape 
to distract the attention in his figure-pieces, but with 
masterly art introduces it sufficiently to relieve and 
give effect to their dramatic purpose. That he is 
often tempted to do otherwise he confesses in a letter 
to Southey, and adds : "I am fortunate, for I never 
compose a single verse within doors, except in bed 
sometimes. I do not know what the satirists would 
say if they knew that most of my verses spring from 
a gate-post or a mole-hill." Trees, flowers, every 
growing thing was sacred to him, and informed with 
happy life. It was his wish and way 

"To let all flowers live freely, and all die, 
Whene'er their Genius bids their souls depart, 
Among their kindred in their native place. 
I never pluck the rose ; the violet's head 
Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank, 
And not reproached me ; the ever-sacred cup 
Of the pure lily hath between my hands 
Felt safe, unsoiled, nor lost one grain of gold." 

His affection for dogs and other dumb creatures, 
like his understanding of them, is no less instinctive 
and sincere. Of all the Louis .Quatorze rhymesters 
he tolerates La Fontaine only, " for I never see an 
animal," he writes, "unless it be a parrot or a mon- 
key or a pug-dog or a serpent, that I do not converse 
with it either openly or secretly." 

In the dialogue to which I have referred he pro- 
tests against the senseless imitation of Grecian archi- 
tecture in the cold climate of our North, — and this 



Affection 
for animals. 



62 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



Classicism. 



Landor 
thoroughly 
modern, and 
a radical 
thinker. 



reminds me of Landor's classicism and its relation 
to the value of his work. In Latin composition he 
excelled any contemporary, and was only equalled 
by Milton and a few others of the past. Latin, as 
I have shown, was at times the language of his 
thoughts, and, as he wrote for expression only, he 
loved to use it for his verse. Greek was less at his 
command, but he could always recall it by a fort- 
night's study, and his taste and feeling were rather 
Athenian than Roman. Undoubtedly, as judicious 
friends constantly were assuring him, he threw away 
precious labor in composing Latin epigrams, satires, 
and idyls ; yet his English style, like that of other 
famous masters, acquired a peculiar strength and 
nobleness from the influence of his classical diver- 
sions. He has not escaped the charge of valuing 
only what is old, and holding the antique fashion 
to be more excellent than that of his own period. 
Americans are sufficiently familiar with this conceit 
of shallow critics and self-made men ; yet the finest 
scholars I have known have been the most fervent 
patriots, the most advanced thinkers, the most vigor- 
ous lovers and frequenters of our forests, mountains, 
and lakes. With regard to Landor, never was a prej- 
udice so misapplied. He was essentially modern and 
radical, looking to the future rather than to the past, 
and was among the first to welcome and appreciate 
Tennyson, the Brownings, Margaret Fuller, Kossuth, 
and other poets and enthusiasts of the time. He was 
called an old pagan ; while in truth his boast was 
just, not only that he " walked up to the ancients 
and talked with them familiarly," but that he " never 
took a drop of wine or crust of bread in their 
houses." There was, to be sure, something of the 



HIS KNOWLEDGE. 



63 



Epicurean in the zest with which he made the most 
of life, and his nearness to nature may seem pagan 
to those whose idealism is that of the desk and closet 
only. " It is hard," he says of gunning, " to take 
what we cannot give ; and life is a pleasant thing, at 
least to birds. No doubt the young ones say tender 
things one to another, and even the old ones do not 
dream of death." 

Landor's appetite for knowledge was insatiable, wor- 
thy of the era, and his acquisitions were immense. He 
gathered up facts insensibly and retained everything 
that he observed or read. Of history he was a close 
and universal student. As he possessed no books of 
reference, it is not surprising that his memory was 
occasionally at fault. De Quincey said that his learn- 
ing was sometimes defective, — but this was high praise 
from De Quincey, — and of his genius, that he always 
rose with his subject, and dilated, " like Satan, into 
Teneriffe or Atlas when he saw before him an an- 
tagonist worthy of his powers." Landor is not so 
generous to himself, but affirms, "I am a horrible 

compounder of historical facts I have usually 

one history that I have read, another that I have 
invented." In his " Imaginary Conversations " the 
invented history, like that of Shakespeare's, seems to 
me its own excuse for being. The philosophies of 
every age are no less at his tongue's end, and sub- 
ject to his wise discrimination. With unsubstantial 
metaphysics he has small patience, and believes that 
"we are upon earth to learn what can be learnt upon 
earth, and not to speculate upon what never can be." 
Politics he is discussing constantly, but has too broad 
and social a foothold to satisfy a partisan. What- 
soever things are just and pure, these he supports ; 



His knowl- 
edge. 



6 4 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



His republi- 
canism. 



Critical 
powers. 



above all, his love of liberty is intense as Shelley's, 
Mazzini's, or Garibaldi's, and often as unreasoning. 
Always on the side of the poor and oppressed, he in- 
directly approves even regicide, but is so tender of 
heart that he would not really harm a fly. His indi- 
viduality was strong throughout, and he was able to 
maintain no prolonged allegiance to party, church, or 
state ; nay, not even to obey when he undertook obedi- 
ence, — for, although he was at munificent expense in a 
personal attempt to aid the Spanish patriots, and re- 
ceived an officer's commission from the Junta, he took 
offence almost at the outset, and threw up his command 
after a brief skirmishing experience on the frontier. 
He admired our own country for its form of govern- 
ment, but seemed to think Washington and Franklin its 
only heroic characters. If there was an exception to 
his general knowledge, it was with regard to America : 
like other Englishmen of his time, he had no ade- 
quate comprehension of men and things on this side 
of the Atlantic. Could he have visited us in his 
wanderings, the clear American skies, the free atmos- 
phere, and the vitality of our institutions would have 
rejoiced his spirit, and might have rendered him more 
tolerant of certain national and individual traits which, 
although we trust they are but for a season, served at 
a distance to excite his irritation and disdain. 

For criticism Landor had a determined bent, which 
displays itself in his essays, talk, and correspondence. 
The critical and creative natures are rarely united in 
one person. The greatest poets have left only their 
own works behind them, too occupied or too indiffer- 
ent to record their judgment of their contemporaries. 
But Landor lived in a critical age, and so acute was 
his sense of the fitness of things, that it impelled him 



CRITICAL POWERS. 



65 



to estimate and comment upon every literary produc- 
tion that came under his observation. In the warmth 
of his heart, he was too apt to eulogize the efforts of 
his personal friends ; but, otherwise considered, his 
writings are full of criticism than which there is 
nothing truer, subtler, or more comprehensive in the 
English tongue. He had, furthermore, a passion for 
scholarly notes and minute verbal emendation. In 
the former direction his scholia upon the classical 
texts are full of learning and beauty; but when he 
essayed philology, — of which he had little knowledge, 
in the modern sense, — and attempted to regulate the 
orthography of our language, the result was something 
lamentable. His vagaries of this sort, I need scarcely 
add, were persisted in to the exclusion of greater things, 
and partly, no doubt, because they seemed objection- 
able to others and positively hindered his career. 

While the literary consciousness and thoroughly gen- 
uine art of Landor's poetry are recognized by all of 
his own profession, much of it, like certain still-life 
painting, is chiefly valuable for technical beauty, and 
admired by the poet rather than by the popular critic. 
As one might say of Jeremy Taylor, that it was impos- 
sible, even by chance, that he could write profane or 
libidinous doctrine, so it seemed impossible for Landor, 
even in feeble and ill-advised moments, to compose 
anything that was trite or inartistic. The touch of 
the master, the quality of the poet, is dominant over 
all. His voice was sweet, and he could not speak un- 
musically, though in a rage. His daintiest trifles show 
this : they are found at random, like precious stones, 
sometimes broken and incomplete, but every one — so 
far as it goes — pure in color and absolutely without 
flaw. A slight object served him for a text, and in 



Technical 
excellence. 



66 



WALTER SAVAGE LAND OR. 



Poetic ex- 
travagance. 



His fame. 



honor of a woman who pleased him, but who seemed 
far enough beneath him to ordinary eyes, he composed 
eighty-five lyrics that might have beguiled Diana. 

In discoursing upon elevated themes he was seized 
with that divine extravagance which possessed the 
bards of old ; and, in verse addressed to persons whom 
he loved or detested, he took the manner of his favor- 
ite classical lyrists, and in every instance went to the 
extreme of gallant compliment or withering scorn. 
His determination to have freedom from restraint, at 
all hazards and any cost, exhibits itself in his poetry 
and prose. Here he found a liberty, an independence 
of other rules than his own judgment or caprice, which 
he could not enjoy in daily life, — although in conduct, 
as in letters, he was so obstreperous and unpleasant 
an opponent that few cared to set themselves in his 
way. I repeat that, for all his great powers, he was a 
royal Bohemian in art, as throughout life, and never 
in poetry composed the ample work which he himself 
asserted is requisite to establish the greatness of a 
poet; yet, in a more barren period, one fourth as 
much as he accomplished sufficed for the reputation 
of Goldsmith, Collins, or Gray. 

With regard to the fame of Landor it may be said, 
that, while he has not reached a rank which embold- 
ens any publisher to issue a complete edition of his 
varied and extensive writings, 1 — and even his poems, 
alone, are not brought together and sold with Byron, 



1 At present, the best collection of Landor's works is that made 
in 1846 (2 vols. 8vo), of such as he himself then deemed worthy 
of preservation. A new edition has lately been printed. It con- 
tains the Imaginary Conversatio7ts, Citation of Shakespeare, Pen- 
tameron, Pericles and Aspasia, Gebir, the first series of Hellenics, 
and most of the author's dramatic and lyric poems which pre- 






HIS AUDIENCE. 



6 7 



Longfellow, Tennyson, and other public favorites, — 
it is certain, nevertheless, that he has long emerged 
from that condition in which De Quincey designated 
him as a man of great genius who might lay claim to 
a reputation on the basis of not being read. He has 
gained a hearing from a fit audience, though few, 
which will have its successors through many genera- 
tions. To me his fame seems more secure than that 
of some of his popular contemporaries. If Landor 
himself had any feeling upon the subject, it was that 
time would yield him justice. No one could do better 
without applause, worked less for it, counted less upon 
it; yet when it came to him he was delighted in a 
simple way. It pleased him by its novelty, and often 
he pronounced it critical — because it was applause — 
and overestimated the bestower: that is, he knew the 
verdict of his few admirers was correct, and by it 
gauged their general understanding. He challenged his 
critics with a perfect consciousness of his own excellence 
in art ; yet only asserted his rights when they were de- 
nied him. In all his books there is no whit of coward- 
ice or whining. Nothing could make them morbid and 
jaundiced, for it was chiefly as an author that he had a 
religion and conscience, and was capable of self-denial. 
Landor's prolonged discouragements, however, made 
him contemptuous of putting out his strength before 
people who did not properly measure him, and he 
felt all the loneliness of a man superior to his time. 



ceded its date of compilation. The later Hellenics, Last Fruit 
off an Old Tree, Heroic Idyls, Scenes for a Study, etc., can only 
be procured in separate volumes and pamphlets, and, in book- 
seller's diction, are fast becoming "rare." — January, 1875 : a 
complete edition of Landor, in six volumes, is now announced 
for early publication by a London house. 



His attitude 

toward 

applause. 



68 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



Desire for 
appreciation. 



In youth he once or twice betrayed a yearning for 
appreciation. How nobly and tenderly he expressed 
it ! "I confess to you, if even foolish men had read 
'Gebir,' I should have continued to write poetry; 
there is something of summer in the hum of insects." 
And again : " The popularis aura, though we are 
ashamed or unable to analyze it, is requisite for the 
health and growth of genius. Had 'Gebir' been a 
worse poem, but with more admirers, and I had once 
filled my sails, I should have made many and per- 
haps more prosperous voyages. There is almost as 
much vanity in disdaining the opinion of the world 
as in pursuing it." 

He did not disdain it, but reconciled himself with 
what heart he might to its absence. In later years 
he asserted : " I shall have as many readers as I 
desire to have in other times than ours. I shall 
dine late ; but the dining-room will be well lighted, 
the guests few and select." Southey buried himself 
in work, when galled by his failure to touch the 
popular heart ; Landor, in life and action, and in 
healthful Nature's haunts. The "Imaginary Conver- 
sations " were, to a certain degree, a popular suc- 
cess, — at least, were generally known and read by 
cultured Englishmen ; and for some years their author 
heartily enjoyed the measure of reputation which he 
then, for the first time, received. It was during this 
Sunlit period that he addressed a noble ode to Joseph 
Ablett, containing these impulsive lines : — 
" I never courted friends or Fame ; 
She pouted at me long, at last she came, 
And threw her arms around my neck and said, 
'Take what hath been for years delayed, 
And fear not that the leaves will fall 
One hour the earlier from thy coronal.' " 



THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. 



6 9 



Threescore years and ten are the natural term of 
life, yet we find Landor at that point just leaving 
the meridian of his strength and splendor. When 
seventy-one, he saw his English writings collected 
under Forster's supervision, and his renown would 
have been no less if he had then sung his nunc di- 
mittis and composed no longer. Yet we could not 
spare that most poetical volume which appeared near 
the close of the ensuing year. At a dash, he made 
and printed the English version of his Latin Idyls, — 
written half a lifetime before. We already have 
classed the "Cupid and Pan," "Dryope," "The Chil- 
dren of Venus," with their companion-pieces, as a 
portion of his choicest work. Five years afterward 
he gathered up The Last Fruit off an Old Tree, and 
meant therewith to end his literary labors. To this 
volume was prefaced the "Dying Speech of an Old 
Philosopher," — and who but Landor could have writ- 
ten the faultless and pathetic quatrain? 

" I strove with none, for none was worth my strife ; 
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art; 
I warmed both hands before the fire of life ; 
It sinks, and I am ready to depart." 

Our author's prose never was more characteristic 
than in this book, which contained some modern dia- 
logues, much literary and political disquisition, and 
the delightful critical papers upon Theocritus and 
Catullus. The poetry consisted of lyrics and epistles, 
with a stirring dramatic fragment, — "The Cenci." 
Many a time thereafter the poet turned his face to 
the wall, but could not die : the gods were unkind, 
and would not send Iris to clip the sacred lock. He 
was compelled to live on till nothing but his voice 
was left him • yet, living, he could not be without 



Threescore 
years and 
ten. 



" The Last 
Fruit off an 
Old Tree," 
1853- 



7o 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



1 Dry Sticks 



"Heroic 
Idyls" 1863. 



Kate Field. 



expression. In 1857-58 came a sorrowful affair at 
Bath, where the old man was enveloped in a swarm 
of flies and stopped to battle with them ; engaged at 
eighty-two in a quixotic warfare with people immeas- 
urably beneath him, and sending forth epigrams, like 
some worn-out, crazy warrior toying with the bow- 
and-arrows of his childhood. I am thankful to forget 
all this, when reading the classical dialogues printed 
in his eighty-ninth year, under the title of Heroic 
Idyls. Still more lately were composed the poetical 
scenes and dialogues given in the closing pages of 
his biography. 1 

Deaf, lame, and blind, as Landor was, — qualis 
artifex periit ! The letters, poems, and criticisms of 
his last three years of life are full of thought and 
excellence. The love of song stayed by him ; he 
was a poet above all, and, like all true poets, young 
in feeling to the last, and fond of bringing youth 
and beauty around him. We owe to one enthusi- 
astic girl, in whom both these graces were united, a 
striking picture of the old minstrel with his foam- 
white, patriarchal beard, his leonine visage, and head 
not unlike that of Michael Angelo's " Moses " ; and 
it was to the fresh and eager mind of such a listener, 
with his own aesthetic sensibilities for the time well 
pleased, that he offered priceless fragments of wit 



1 Besides additions, in English, to the "Imaginary Conversa- 
tions," Landor wrote, in Italian, a dialogue entitled Savonarola 
e il Prior e di San Marco. It appeared in i860, but was speedily 
suppressed through Church influence, and the edition remained 
on his hands in sheets. The author's old prejudice against Plato 
breaks out in this pamphlet, quaintly and incongruously, but Mr. 
Swinburne justly says of the production that "it is a noble 'last 
fruit ' of the Italian branch of that mighty tree." 



DEATH OF THE LION. 



71 



and courtesy, and expounded the simply perfect can- 
ons of his verse. The finest thing we know of Swin- 
burne's life is his pilgrimage to Italy and unselfish 
reverence at the feet of the incomparable artist, the 
unconquerable freeman, to whom he 

" Came as one whose thoughts half linger, 
Half run before ; 
The youngest to the oldest singer 
That England bore." 

To some who then for the first time knew Landor, 
and who were not endowed with the refined percep- 
tions of these young enthusiasts, the foibles of his 
latter days obscured his genius ; to us, at this dis- 
tance, they seem only the tremors of the dying lion. 
When, at the age of eighty-nine years and nine 
months, he breathed his last at Florence, it was in- 
deed like the death of some monarch of the forest, — 
most untamed when powerless, away from the region 
which gave him birth and the air which fostered his 
scornful yet heroic spirit. 



A. C. Swin- 
burne. 



W. S. L. 
died in Flor- 
ence, Sept. 
17, 1864. 



CHAPTER III. 



THOMAS HOOD. — MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
WALLER PROCTER. 



BRYAN 



Compara- 
tive criti- 
cism. 



Three poets. 



I. 

I BRING together the foregoing names of poets, 
whose works very clearly reflect certain phases of 
English life and literature. It would be difficult to 
select three more unlike one another in genius, mo- 
tive, and the results of their devotion to art, or any 
three whose relations to their period can be defined 
so justly by a process of contrast and comparison. 
This process is objectionable when we are testing 
the success of an author in the fulfilment of his own 
artistic purpose ; it has its use, nevertheless, in a 
general survey of the poetry of any given time. 

Here are the poet of sympathy, the poet of cul- 
tured intellect, and the born vocalist of lyric song. 
The first is thoroughly democratic in his expression 
of the mirth and tragedy of common life. The sec- 
ond equally represents his era, with its excess of cul- 
ture, subtile intellectuality, poverty of theme, reliance 
upon the beauty and wisdom of the past. His sym- 
pathies may be no less acute, but the popular in- 
stinct has deemed them loyal to his own class; his 
humanity takes little note of individuals, but regards 
social and psychological problems in the abstract; as 
for his genius, it is critical rather than creative. The 



A POET OF THE HEART 



73 



last of this trinity is delightful for the troubadour 
quality of his minstrelsy : a dramatist and song-writer, 
loving poetry for itself, possessing what the musician 
would call a genuine " voice," and giving blithe, un- 
studied utterance to his tuneful impulses. Hood is 
the poet of the crowd ; Arnold, of the closet ; Proc- 
ter, of the open air : — all are purely English, and 
belong to the England of a very recent day. 



II. 

Examining the work of these minor, yet representa- 
tive poets, we find that of Thomas Hood so attractive 
and familiar, that in his case the former qualification 
seems a distinction by no wide remove from the best 
of his contemporaries. He had a portion of almost 
every^gift belonging to a true poet, and but for re- 
stricted health and fortune would have maintained a 
higher standard. His sympathetic instinct was espe- 
cially tender and alert ; he was the poet of the heart, 
and sound at heart himself, — the poet of humane 
sentiment, clarified by a living spring of humor, which 
kept it from any taint of sentimentalism. To read 
his pages is to laugh and weep by turns ; to take on 
human charity; to regard the earth mournfully, yet 
be thankful, as he was, for what sunshine falls upon 
it, and to accept manfully, as he did, each one's 
condition, however toilsome and suffering, under the 
changeless law that impels and governs all. Even 
his artistic weaknesses (and he had no other) were 
frolicsome and endearing. Much of his verse was 
the poetry of the beautiful, in a direction opposite to 
that of the metaphysical kind. His humor — not his 
jaded humor, the pack-horse of daily task-work, but 
4 



Thomas 
Hood: born 
in London, 
May, 1799. 






74 



THOMAS HOOD. 



His youth. 



his humor at its best, which so lightened his pack of 
ills and sorrows, and made all England know him — 
was the merriment of hamlets and hostels around the 
skirts of Parnassus, where not the gods, but Earth's 
common children, hold their gala-days within the 
shadow. Lastly, his severer lyrical faculty was musi- 
cal and sweet : its product is as refined as the most 
exacting need require, and keeps more uniformly than 
other modern poetry to the idiomatic measures of 
English song. 

Hood failed in a youthful effort to master the 
drudgery of a commercial desk. He then attempted 
to practise the art of engraving, but found it ruin- 
ous to his health. It served to develop a pleasant 
knack of sketching, which was similar in quality and 
after-use to Thackeray's gift in that line, and came 
as readily to its owner. At last he easily drifted into 
the life of a working man of letters, and figured 
creditably, both as humorist and as poet, before the 
commencement of the present British reign. Yet that 
portion of his verse which is engrafted upon litera- 
ture as distinctively his own was not composed, it 
will be seen, until within the years immediately pre- 
ceding his death. He thus occupies a niche in the 
arcade along which our vision at present is directed. 

His youthful career, in fact, belongs to that in- 
terval when people were beginning to shake off the 
influence of Byron and his compeers, and to ask for 
something new. It is noticeable that the works of 
Keats, Shelley, and Coleridge separated themselves 
from the debris, and greatly affected the rising genera- 
tion of poets, inciting a reaction, from the passionate 
unrestraint of the romantic school, to the fastidious 
art of which Keats was the rarest and most intuitive 



HIS EARLY PRODUCTIONS. 



75 



master. The change was accelerated by such men as 
Leigh Hunt, — then at his poetic meridian, and a 
clear, though somewhat gentle, signal-light between 
the future and the past. Hood's early and serious 
poems are of the artistic sort, evincing his adherence 
to the new method, and an eager study of Shake- 
speare and other Elizabethan models. 

At various times between 182 1 and 1830 were com- 
posed such pieces as " Hero and Leander," — in the 
manner of " Venus and Adonis " ; " The Two Swans," 
" The Two Peacocks of Bedfont," and " The Plea of 
the Midsummer Fairies," — carefully written after the 
fashion of Spenser and his teachers ; " Lycus, the Cen- 
taur " ; numberless fine sonnets ; and a few lyrics, 
among which the ballad of " Fair Ines " certainly is 
without a peer. Much of this verse exhibits Hood's 
persistent defect, — a failing from which he never 
wholly recovered, and which was due to excess of 
nervous imagination, — that of overloading a poem 
with as much verbal and scenic detail as the theme 
and structure could be made to bear. Otherwise it 
is very charming: such work as then commended 
itself to poets, and which the modern public has been 
taught to recognize. " Lycus, the Centaur," for instance, 
reads like a production of the latest school ; and 
Hood's children, in their " Memorials " of the poet, 
justly term " The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies " 
a " most artistic poem," which " has latterly been more 
fairly appreciated in spite of its antiquated style." 
But his own public took little interest in these fanci- 
ful compositions of Hood's younger muse, however 
clearly they reveal the artist side of his nature, his 
delicate taste, command of rhythm, and devotion to 
his ideal. These traits were more acceptable in his 



Hood's early 

poems. 

1821-30. 



76 



THOMAS HOOD. 



Lyrical bal- 
lads. 



The verbal 
school. 



shorter lyrics of that period, many of which were de- 
licious, and beyond his own power to excel in later 
years. His ballads — contributed to the magazines 
and annuals, then in vogue, with which he was con- 
nected — are full of grace, simplicity, pathos, and spirit. 
All must acknowledge, with Poe, that " Fair Ines " is 
perfect of its kind. Take this exquisite ballad, and 
others, written at various dates throughout his life, 
— "It was not in the Winter," "Sigh on, sad Heart," 
"She's up and gone, the graceless Girl," "What 
can an old Man do but die?" "The Death-Bed," 
"I Remember, I Remember," "Ruth," "Farewell, 
Life ! " ; take also the more imaginative odes to be 
found in his collected works, — such as those " To 
Melancholy" and "To the Moon"; take these lyrical 
poems, and give them, after some consideration of 
present verse-making, a careful reading anew. They 
are here cited as his lyrical conceptions, not as work 
in what afterward proved to be his special field, and 
we shortly may dismiss this portion of our theme. 
I call these songs and ballads, poetry : poetry or the 
lasting sort, native to the English tongue, and attrac- 
tive to successive generations. I believe that some 
of them will be read when many years have passed 
away ; that they will be picked out and treasured by 
future compilers, as we now select and delight in the 
songs of Jonson, Suckling, Herrick, and other noble 
kinsmen. Place them in contrast with efforts of the 
verbal school, — all sound and color, conveying no pre- 
cise sentiment, vivified by no motive sweet with feeling 
or easeful with unstudied rhythm. Of a truth, much 
of this elaborate modern verse is but the curious 
fashion of a moment, and as the flower of grass : " the 
grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away." 



A TRUE GIFT OF HUMOR. 



77 



Although Hood took little recognition by the deli- 
cate poems which were the children nearest their 
begetter's heart, he at once gained the favor of his 
countrymen through that ready humor which formed 
so large a portion of his birthright. He had versa- 
tility, and his measures, however lacking in strength 
of imagination, exhibit humane and dramatic elements 
which we miss in those of his greatest contemporary. 
His fantastic image, though topped with the cap and 
bells, may well be garlanded with rue, and placed, 
like Garrick's, between the Muses of Comedy and 
Tragedy. He had the veritable gift of Humor, — 
that which makes us weep, yet smile through our 
tears. But how this faculty was overworked ! and 
how his verse was thinned and degraded, to suit the 
caprice of a rude public, by that treacherous facility 
which it seemed beyond his power rightly to control ! 

Hood's Odes a?id Addresses, his comic diversions in 
The London Magazine, and the pronounced success of 
Whims and Oddities (1826), gave him notoriety as a 
fun-maker, and doomed him either to starve, or to 
grimace for the national amusement during the twenty 
after-years of his toiling, pathetic life. The British 
always will have their Samson, out of the prison- 
house, to make them sport. Tickle the ribs of those 
spleen-devoured idlers or workers, in London and a 
score of dingy cities ; dispel for a moment the in- 
sular melancholy; and you may command the pence 
of the poor, and the patronage, if you choose, of the 
rich and titled. But at what a sacrifice ! The mask 
of more than one Merryman has hidden a death's- 
head ; his path has slanted to the tomb, though 
strewn with tinsel and taffeta roses, and garish with 
all the cressets of the circus-ring. Whatever Hood 



Hood's 
humor. 



Cp." Poets 

of A mer- 
ica " : //. 
258-260, 
321. 



A jester by 
profession. 



78 



THOMAS HOOD. 



His poorer 
verse and 
prose. 



Comic 
poetry. 



might essay, the public was stolidly expecting a quip 
or a jest. These were kindly given, though often 
poor as the health and fortunes of the jester • and 
it is no marvel that, under the prolonged draughts 
of Hood^s Own and the Comic Annuals^ the beery 
mirth ran swipes. Even then it was just as eagerly 
received, for the popular sense of wit is none too 
nice, and the British commons retain their honest 
youthfulness, coarse of appetite, pleased with a rattle, 
tickled with a straw. 

There is no more sorrowful display of metrical 
literature — a tribute extorted from the poet who 
wrote for a living — than the bulk of his comic verses 
brought together in the volumes of Hood's remains. 
It was a sin and a shame to preserve it, but there 
it lies, with all its wretched puns and nonsense of 
the vanished past, a warning to every succeeding 
writer ! To it might be added countless pages of 
equally valueless and trivial prose. Yet what clever 
work the man could do ! In extravaganzas like " The 
Tale of a Trumpet" his sudden laughter flashes into 
wit; and there are half-pensive, half -mirthful lyrics, 
such as "A Retrospective Review," and the "Lament 
for the Decline of Chivalry," thrown off no less for 
his own than for the public enjoyment, of which the 
humor is natural and refined: not that of our day, to 
be sure, but to be estimated with the author's nation- 
ality and time. The "Ode to Rae Wilson, Esquire," 
though long and loosely written, is an honest, health- 
ful satire, that would have delighted Robert Burns. 

In one sense the term " comic poetry " is a misno- 
mer. A poem often is just so much the less a poem 
by the amount it contains of puns, sarcasm, " broad 
grins," and other munitions of the satirist or farceur 



COMIC POETRY. 



79 



Yet the touch of the poet's wand glorifies the lightest, 
commonest object, and consecrates everything that is 
human to the magician's use. There is an imagina- 
tive mirth, no less than an imaginative wrath or pas- 
sion, and with this element Hood's most important 
satirical poem is charged throughout. The " Golden 
Legend " of " Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg," 
as a sustained piece of metrical humor, is absolutely 
unique. The flexible metre takes the reader with it, 
from the first line to the last, and this is no small 
achievement. The poem is utterly unhampered, yet 
quite in keeping; the satire faithful and searching; 
the narrative an audacious, fanciful story ; the final 
tragedy as grotesque as that of a Flemish Dance of 
Death. At first the poet revels in his apotheosis of 
gold, the subject and motive of the poem : the yellow, 
cruel, pompous metal lines the floor, walls, and ceil- 
ing of his structure ; it oozes, molten, from every 
break and crevice ; the personages are clothed in it ; 
threads of gold bind the rushing couplets together. 
What a picture of rich, auriferous, vulgar London 
life ! Passages of grim pathos are scattered here and 
there, as by Thackeray in the prose satires of " Cath- 
erine " and " Barry Lyndon." When the murdered 
Countess's " spark, called vital," has departed, — 
when in the morning, 

" Her Leg, the Golden Leg, was gone, 
And the ' Golden Bowl was broken,' " — 

then comes the " Moral " of the jester's tale : — 

'•'Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! 
Bright and yellow, hard and cold, 
Molten, graven, hammered, and rolled; 
Heavy to get, and light to hold ; 



"Miss Kil- 
mansegg.'" 



8o 



THOMAS HOOD. 



Thackeray 
and Hood. 



Hoarded, bartered, bought, and sold, 
Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled : 
Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old 
To the very verge of the churchyard mould ; 
Price of many a crime untold ; 
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! 
Good or bad a thousand-fold ! 

How widely its agencies vary — 
To save — to ruin — to curse — to bless — 
As even its minted coins express, 
Now stamped with the image of Good Queen Bess, 

And now of a Bloody Mary," 

The legend of the hapless Kilmansegg is known to 
every reader. Who can forget her auspicious pedi- 
gree, her birth, christening, and childhood, her acci- 
dent, her precious leg, her fancy-ball, her marriage a 
la mode, followed in swift succession by the Hogarth- 
ian pictures of her misery and death? The poem 
is full of rollicking, unhampered fancy ; long as it is, 
the movement is so rapid that it almost seems to 
have been written at a heat, — at least, can easily be 
read at a sitting. Though not without those absurd 
lapses which constantly irritate us in the perusal of 
Hood's lighter pieces, it is the most lusty and char- 
acteristic of them all. Standing at the front of its 
author's facetious verse, it renders him the leading 
poet-humorist of his generation ; and, in a critical 
review of any generation, the elements of mirth and 
satire cannot be overlooked. Of course, we are now 
considering a time when the genius of Thackeray 
scarcely had made itself felt and known. The grave- 
and-gay ballads of the novelist were but the overflow 
of his masterful nature ; yet so bounteous was that 
overflow, so compounded of all parts which go to the 
making of a Shakespearean mind, that, brief and with- 



POVERTY UNFRIENDLY TO ART. 



out pretension as Thackeray's trifles are, more than 
one of them — for wit, grace, fancy, and other poetic 
constituents — is worth whole pages of the doggerel 
by which Hood earned his bread. What the latter 
did professionally the former executed with the airy 
lightness of a cavalier trying his sword-blade. 

Contrasting the taste revealed in Hood's lyrics with 
the paltriness of his comic jingles, it would seem that 
his deterioration might be due to the constant neces- 
sity for labor which poverty imposed upon him, and 
to the fact that his labor was in the department of 
journalism. Only the most unremitting toil could 
support him as a magazine-writer; he gained the ear 
of the public not so much by humor as by drollery, 
and joke he must, be the sallies wise or otherwise, 
or the fire would go out on the hearth-stone, and the 
wolf enter at the door. In his day it was the laugh- 
ter inspired by the actual presence of the comedian, 
upon the stage, that, in the nature of things, was 
measured at its worth and paid for. A few hundred 
pounds to the year were all that England gave the 
weary penman who could send a smile wreathing from 
Land's End to John o' Groat's. 

If a poet, or aspiring author, must labor for the 
daily subsistence of a family, it is well for his art 
that he should follow some other calling than jour- 
nalism \ for I can testify that after the day's work is 
over, — when the brain is exhausted and vagrant, and 
the lungs pant for air, and body and soul cry out for 
recreation, — the intellect has done enough, and there 
is neither strength nor passion left for imaginative 
composition. I have known a writer who deliberately 
left the editorial profession, for which he was adapted 
both by taste and vocation, and took up a pursuit 
4* F 



Poverty un- 
friendly to 
the Muse. 

Cp. " Poets 
of Amer- 
ica " ." p. 
268. 



A uthorship 
and jour- 
nalism. 



THOMAS HOOD. 



Cp. " Poets 
of Amer- 
ica " .• pp. 
75, 108, 
233? 417. 



Hood a 
j our7talist- 
poet. 



which bore no relation to letters ; hoping that author- 
ship would proffer him thenceforth the freshness of 
variety, that upon occasion of loss or trouble it might 
be his solace and recompense, and that, with a less 
jaded brain, what writing he could accomplish would 
be of a more enduring kind. It is so true, however, 
that one nail drives out another ! As an editor, this 
person was unable to do anything beyond his news- 
paper work ; as a business-man, with not the soundest 
health, and with his heart, of course, not fully in his 
occupation, he found himself neither at ease in his 
means, nor able to gain sturdier hours for literature 
than vigorous journalist-authors filch from recreation 
and sleep. Fortunate in every way is the aesthetic 
writer who has sufficient income to support him alto- 
gether, or, at least, when added to the stipend earned 
by first-class work, to enable him to follow art without 
harassment. For want of such a resource, poets, with 
their delicate temperaments, may struggle along from 
year to year, composing at intervals which other men 
devote to social enjoyment, rarely doing their best ; 
possibly with masterpieces stifled in their brains till 
the creative period is ended ; misjudged by those 
whom they most respect, and vexed with thoughts of 
what they could perform, if sacred common duties 
were not so incumbent upon them. 

Nevertheless, if Hood's life had been one of scho- 
lastic ease, in all likelihood he would not have writ- 
ten that for which his name is cherished. He was 
eminently a journalist-poet, and must be observed in 
that capacity. Continuous editorial labor, beginning 
in 182 1 with his post upon The London Magazine, 
and including his management of The Comic Annual, 
Hood's Own, The Neiv Monthly, and, lastly, Hood's 



LONDON'S POET. 



S3 



Magazine, — established but little more than a year 
before his death, — this journalistic experience, doubt- 
less, gave him closer knowledge of the wants and 
emotions of the masses, and especially of the popu- 
lace in London's murky streets. Even his facetious 
poems depict the throng upon the walks. The sweep, 
the laborer, the sailor, the tradesman, even the dumb 
beasts that render service or companionship, appeal 
to his kindly or mirthful sensibilities and figure in 
his rhymes. Thus he was, also, London's poet, the 
nursling of the city which gave him birth, and now 
holds sacred his resting-place in her cemetery of Ken- 
sal Green. Like the gentle Elia, whom he resembled 
in other ways, he loved " the sweet security of streets," 
and well, indeed, he knew them. None but such as 
he could rightly speak for their wanderers and poor. 
The rich philanthropist or aristocratic author may 
honestly give his service to the lower classes, and 
endeavor by contact with them to enter into their 
feelings, yet it is almost impossible, unless nurtured 
yourself at the withered bosom of our Lady of Pov- 
erty, to read the language of her patient foster-chil- 
dren. The relation of almoner and beneficiary still 
exists, a sure though indefinable barrier. Hood was 
not exclusively a poet of the people, like Elliott or 
Be'ranger, but one who interpreted the popular heart, 
being himself a sufferer, and living from hand to 
mouth by ill-requited toil. If his culture divided him 
somewhat from the poor, he all the more- endured 
a lack of that free confession which is the privilege 
of those than whom he was no richer. The genteel 
poor must hide their wounds, even from one another. 
Hood solaced his own trials by a plea for those 
" whom he saw suffer." A man of kindred genius, 



London 1 . 
Poet. 



Fellowship 
of the poor. 



8 4 



THOMAS HOOD. 



Hood and 
Dickens. 



Similarity 
of their 
methods. 



the most potent of the band of humanitarian writers, 
who, in his time, sought to effect reform by means 
of imaginative art, also understood the poor, but 
chiefly through the memory of his own youthful expe- 
riences. In after years the witchery of prose-romance 
brought to Charles Dickens a competence that Hood 
never could hope to acquire. Most men of robust 
physical vigor, who have known privation, yield to 
luxury when they achieve success, and Dickens was 
no exception ; but his heart was with the multitude, 
he never was quite at home in stately mansions, and, 
though accused of snobbery in other forms, would 
admit no one's claim to patronize him by virtue of 
either rank or fortune. 

We readily perceive that Hood's modes of feeling 
resembled those which intensify the prose of Dickens, 
though he made no approach to the latter in reputa- 
tion and affluent power. Could Dickens have written 
verse, — an art in which his experiments were, for the 
most part, utter failures, — it would have been marked 
by wit and pathos like Hood's, and by graphic, Do- 
resque effects, that have grown to be called melodra- 
matic, and that give a weird strength to " The Dream 
of Eugene Aram," " The Haunted House," and to 
several passages in the death-scene of " Miss Kil- 
mansegg." Hood has nearly equalled Dickens in 'the 
analysis of a murderer's spectral conscience : — 

" But Guilt was my grim Chamberlain 
That lighted me to bed ; 
And drew my midnight curtains round, 
With fingers bloody red ! 

" Merrily rose the lark, and shook 
The dew-drop from its wing ; 



HOOD AND DICKENS COMPARED. 



85 



But I never mark'd its morning flight, 

I never heard it sing : 
For I was stooping once again 

Under the horrid thing." 

The old Hall in "The Haunted House" is a coun- 
terpart to the shadowy grand-staircase in the Ded- 
lock Mansion, or to Mr. Tulkinghorn's chamber, — 
where the Roman points through loneliness and 
gloom to the dead body upon the floor. This poem 
is elaborate with that detail which, so painful and 
over-prolonged, gives force to many of Dickens's 
descriptive interludes, — such as, for instance, the 
opening chapter of "Bleak House." The poet and 
the novelist were fellow-workers in a melodramatic 
period, and there is something of stage effect in the 
marked passages of either. Take an example from 
"Miss Kilmansegg": — 

"As she went with her taper up the stair, 
How little her swollen eye was aware 

That the Shadow which followed was double! 
Or, when she closed her chamber door, 
It was shutting out, and forevermore, 

The world, — and its worldly trouble. 

"And when she quench'd the taper's light, 
How little she thought, as the smoke took flight, 
That her day was done, — and merged in a night 
Of dreams and duration uncertain, — 
Or, along with her own, 
That a Hand of Bone 
Was closing mortality's curtain ! " 

In extravagance, also, Dickens and Hood resembled 
each other, and it seems perfectly natural that the 
fantasies of both should be illustrated by the same 
Cruikshank or Phiz. Both, also, give us pleasant! 



A like in 
melodra- 
matic feel- 
ing. 



Other re- 
semblances. 



86 



THOMAS HOOD. 



His most 

famous 

lyrics. 



glimpses of England's greensward and hedge-rows, 
yet the special walk and study of each were in the 
streets and alleys of London ; together they breathed 
the same burdened, whispering, emotional atmosphere 
of the monster town. They were of the circle which 
Jerrold drew around him, the London group of hu- 
mane satirists and poets. Theirs was no amateur or 
closet work, but the flower of zeal and fellow-craft, 
which binds the workmen's hearts together, and 
makes art at once an industry, a heroism, and a 
vitalizing faith. 

Our digression at length has brought us to the 
special group of lyrics upon which Hood's fame indu- 
bitably rests. The manner of what I call his proper 
style had been indicated long before, in such pieces 
as " The Elm-Tree " and " The Dream of Eugene 
Aram," of which the former is too prolonged, a still- 
life painting, barren of human elements, — and the 
latter, as has been seen, a remarkable ballad, ap- 
proaching Coleridge's " Rime of the Ancient Mariner " 
in conception and form. In Hood's case the intel- 
lectual flames shone more brightly as his physical 
heat went out ; in the very shadow of death he was 
doing his best, with a hand that returned to the pure 
ideals of his youth, and a heart that gained increase 
of gentleness and compassion as its throbs timed more 
rapidly the brief remainder of his earthly sojourn. In 
his final year, while editor of Hood's Magazine, a jour- 
nal to which he literally gave his life, he composed 
three of the touching lyrics to which I refer : " The 
Lay of the Laborer," " The Lady's Dream," and 
/'The Bridge of Sighs/') The memorable j Song of 
the Shirt i was written a few months earlier, having 
appeared anonymously in the preceding Christmas 



THE SONG OF THE SHIRT. 



87 



number of Punch. With regard to this poem the 
instinct of the author's devoted wife, who constituted 
his first public, was prophetic when she said : " Now, 
mind, Hood, mark my words, this will tell wonder- 
fully ! It is one of the best things you ever did ! " 
No other lyric ever was written that at once laid such 
hold upon the finest emotions of people of every class 
or nationality, throughout the whole reading or listen- 
ing world, — for it drew tears from the eyes of princes, 
and was chanted to rude music by ballad-mongers in 
the wretchedest streets. 

The judgment of the people has rightly estimated 
the two last-named poems above their companion- 
pieces. They are the unequalled presentment of their 
respective themes, the expressed blood and agony of 
" London's heart." " The Song of the Shirt " was 
the impulsive work of an evening, and open to some 
technical criticism. But who so cold as to criticise 
it? Consider the place, the occasion, the despair of 
thousands of working-women at that time, and was 
ever more inspired and thrilling sermon preached by 
a dying poet? With like sacredness of feeling, and 
superior melody, " The Bridge of Sighs " is a still more 
admirable poem. It is felicitously wrought in a metre 
before almost unused, and which few will henceforth 
have the temerity to borrow: "Who henceforth shall 
sing to thy pipe, O thrice-lamented ! who set mouth to 
thy reeds ? " The tragedy of its stanzas lies at the 
core of our modern life. The woes of London, the 
mystery of London Bridge, the spirit of the materials 
used by Dickens or by Ainsworth in a score of turbid 
romances, — all these are concentrated in this pre- 
cious lyric, as if by chemic process in the hollow of a 
ring. It is the sublimation of charity and forgiveness, 



" The Song 
of the 
Shirt." 



"The 

Bridge oj 
Sighs." 



88 



THOMAS HOOD. 



General 
character- 
istics. 



" Memorials 
of T. H." : 
by his 
daughter, 
Mrs. Brod- 
erip, i860. 



the compassion of the Gospel itself; the theme is 
here touched once and forever ; other poets who have 
essayed it, with few exceptions, have smirched their 
fingers, and soiled or crushed the shell they picked 
from the mud, in their very effort to redeem it from pol- 
lution. The dramatic sorrow which attends the lot of 
womanhood in the festering city reaches its ultimate 
expression in "The Bridge of Sighs" and "The Song 
of the Shirt." They were the twin prayers which the 
suffering poet sent up from his death-bed, and, me- 
thinks, should serve as an expiation for the errors of 
his simple life. 

Our brief summary of the experience and work of 
Thomas Hood has shown that his more careful poetry 
is marked by natural melody, simplicity, and direct- 
ness of language, and is noticeable rather for sweet- 
ness than imaginative fire. There are no strained 
and affected cadences in his songs. Their diction 
is so clear that the expression of the thought has no 
resisting medium, — a high excellence in ballad-verse. 
With respect to their sentiment, all must admire the 
absolute health of Hood's poetry written during years 
of prostration and disease. He warbled cheering and 
trustful music, either as a foil to personal distress, — 
which would have been quite too much to bear, had 
he encountered its echo in his own voice, — or else 
through a manly resolve that, come what might, he 
would have nothing to do with the poetry of despair. 
The man's humor, also, buoyed him up, and thus was 
its own exceeding great reward. 

How prolonged his worldly trials were, — what were 
the privations and constant apprehensions of the lit- 
tle group beneath his swaying roof-tree, — something 
of this is told in the Me7?wrials compiled by his 



DISTRESS AND HEROISM. 



8 9 



distress and 
heroism. 



daughter, and annotated by his son, — the Tom Hood 
of our day: an imperfect and disarranged biography, 
yet one which few can read without emotion. Ill 
health lessened his power to work, and kept him 
poor, and poverty in turn reacted disastrously upon 
his health. With all his reputation he was a literary 
hack, whose income varied as the amount of writing 
he could execute in a certain time. To such a man, 
however, the devotion of his family, and the love of 
Jane Reynolds, — his heroic, accomplished wife, a 
woman in every way fit to be the companion of an 
artist and poet, — were abundant compensation for 
his patient struggle in their behalf. To the last mo- 
ment, propped up in bed, bleeding from the lungs, 
almost in the agony of death, he labored equally in a 
serious or sportive vein ; but while thousands were 
relishing his productions, they gave no delight to the 
anxious circle at home. One passage in the Memo- 
rials tells the whole sad story : " His own family 
never enjoyed his quaint and humorous fancies, for 
they were all associated with memories of illness and 
anxiety. Although Hood's Comic Annual^ as he him- 
self used to remark with pleasure, was in every home 
seized upon, and almost worn out by the handling 
of little fingers, his own children did not enjoy it till 
the lapse of many years had mercifully softened down 
some of the sad recollections connected with it" 

The sorrow and anguish of the closing hours were 
not without their alleviation. His last letter was writ- 
ten to Sir Robert Peel, in gratitude for the pension 
conferred on Mrs. Hood. When it was known that 
he lay dying, public and private sympathy, for which 
he cared so greatly, comforted him in unnumbered 
ways. His friends, neighbors, brother-authors, read- 



Sympathy 
of the Eng- 
lish people. 



90 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 



T. H. died 
in London, 
May 3, 1845. 



Mattliew 
A mold : 
lorn in 
LaleJiam, 
Dec. 24, 
1822. 



ers, and admirers, throughout the kingdom, alike pro- 
foundly touched, gave him words of consolation as 
well as practical aid. A new generation has arisen 
since his death at the age of forty-six, but it is pleas- 
ant to remember the eagerness and generosity with 
which, seven years afterward, the English people con- 
tributed to erect the beautiful monument that stands 
above his grave. The rich gave their guineas ; the 
poor artisans and laborers, the needlewomen and 
dress-makers, in hosts, their shillings and pence. Be- 
neath the image of the poet, which rests upon the 
structure, are sculptured the words which he himself, 
with a still unsatisfied yearning for the affection of 
his fellow-beings, — and a beautiful perception of the 
act for which it long should be rendered to his mem- 
ory, — devised for the inscription : " He sang The 
Song of the Shirt." 



III. 

From the grave of Hood we pass to observe a liv- 
ing writer, in some respects his antipode, who deals 
with precisely those elements of modern life which 
the former had least at heart. It is true that Mat- 
thew Arnold, whose first volume was issued in 1848, 
had little reputation as a poet until some years after 
Hood's decease; but up to that time English verse 
was not marked by its present extreme variety, nor 
had the so-called school of culture obtained a foot- 
hold. Arnold's circumstances have been more favor- 
able than Hood's, and in youth his mental discipline 
was thorough ; yet the humorist was the truer poet, 
although three fourths of his productions never should 
have been written, and although there scarcely is a 



A POET OF THE INTELLECT 



91 



line of Arnold's which is not richly worth preserving. 
It may be said of Hood that he was naturally a bet- 
ter poet than circumstances permitted him to prove 
himself; of Arnold, that through culture and good 
fortune he has achieved greater poetical successes 
than one should expect from his native gifts. His 
verse often is the result, not of " the first intention," 
but of determination and judgment; yet his taste is 
so cultivated, and his mind so clear, that, between the 
two, he has o'erleapt the bounds of nature, and almost 
falsified the adage that a poet is born, not made. 

Certainly he is an illustrious example of the power 
of training and the human will. Lacking the ease of 
the lyrist, the boon of a melodious voice, he has, by 
a tour de force, composed poems which show little 
deficiency of either gift, — has won reputation, and 
impressed himself upon his age, as the apostle of 
culture, spiritual freedom, and classical restraint. 

There is a passion of the voice and a passion of 
the brain. If Arnold, as a singer, lacks spontaneity, 
his intellectual processes, on the contrary, are spon- 
taneous, and sometimes rise to a loftiness which no 
mere lyrist, without unusual mental faculty, can ever 
attain. His head not only predominates, but exalts 
his somewhat languid heart. A poet once sang of a 
woman, — 

" Affections are as thoughts to her," 

but thought with Arnold is poetical as affection, and 
in a measure supplies its place. He has an intellect- 
ual love for the good, beautiful, or true, but imparts 
to us a vague impression that, like a certain American 
statesman, he cares less for man in the concrete than 
for man in the abstract, — a not unusual phenomenon 
among aesthetic reformers. While admiring his de-! 



A mold and 
Hood. 



A poet of the 
intellect. 



9 2 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 



Wanting in 
lyrical flow. 



A mold's 
poetic tlie- 



lineations of Heine, the De Guerins, Joubert, and 
other far-away saints or heroes, we feel that he pos- 
sibly may overlook some pilgrim at his roadside-door. 
Such is the effect of his writings, at this distance, 
and it is by his works that an artist chiefly should be 
judged. 

Through the whole course of Arnold's verse one 
searches in vain for a blithe, musical, gay, or serious 
off-hand poem : such, for example, as Thackeray's 
"Bouillabaisse," Allingham's "Mary Donnelly," Hood's 
" I Remember, I Remember," or Kingsley's " The 
Sands o' Dee." Yet he can be very nobly lyrical in 
certain uneven measures depending upon tone, and 
which, like " Philomela," express an ecstatic sensi- 
bility : — 

" Hark ! ah, the nightingale ! 
The tawny-throated ! 

Hark ! from that moonlit cedar what a burst ! 
What triumph ! hark — what pain ! 

" Listen, Eugenia — 
How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves ! 

Again — thou hearest ! 
Eternal Passion! 
Eternal Pain!" 

In other poems, which reveal his saddest or pro- 
foundest intellectual moods, he is subjective and 
refutes his own theory. For his work claims to be 
produced upon a theory, — that of epic or classical 
objectivity, well and characteristically set forth in 
the preface to his edition of 1854. Possibly this 
was written shortly after the completion of some 
purely objective poem, like " Sohrab and Rustum," 
and the theory deduced from the performance. An 



HIS LIMITATIONS. 



93 



objective method is well suited to a man of large 
or subtile intellect and educated tastes, who is 
deficient in the minor sympathies. Through it he 
can allow his imagination full play, and give a 
pleasure to readers without affecting that feminine 
instinct which really is not a constituent of his 
poetic mould. 

( Arnold has little quality or lightness of touch. His 
hand is stiff, his voice rough by nature, yet both are 
refined by practice and thorough study of the best 
models. ^ His shorter metres, used as the framework 
of songs and lyrics, rarely are successful ; but through 
youthful familiarity with the Greek choruses he has 
caught something of their irregular beauty. " The 
Strayed Reveller " has much of this unfettered charm. 
Arnold is restricted in the range of his affections ; but 
that he is one of those who can love very loyally the 
few with whom they do enter into sympathy, through 
consonance of traits or experiences, is shown in the 
emotional poems entitled " Faded Leaves " and " In- 
difference," and in later pieces, which display more 
lyrical fluency,, " Calais Sands " and " Dover Beach." 
A prosaic manner injures many of his lyrics : at least, 
he does not seem clearly to distinguish between the 
functions of poetry and of prose. He is more at ease 
in long, stately, and swelling measures, whose graver 
movement accords with a serious and elevated pur- 
pose. ^Judged as works of art, " Sohrab and Rustum *j 
and " Balder Dead " really are majestic poems. Their 
blank-verse, while independent of Tennyson's, is the 
result, like that of the " Morte d' Arthur," of its 
author's Homeric studies ; is somewhat too slow in 
Balder Dead, and fails of the antique simplicity, but 
is terse, elegant, and always in "the grand manner." 



His limita- 
tions. 



His blank- 
verse. 



" Balder 
Dead." 



94 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 



" Sohrab 
and Rus- 
tum." 



Upon the whole, this is a remarkable production ; it 
stands at the front of all experiments in a field remote 
as the northern heavens and almost as glacial and 
clear. Fifty lines, which describe the burning of Bal- 
der's ship, — his funeral pyre, — have an imaginative 
grandeur rarely excelled in the "Idyls of the King." 
Such work is what lay beyond Hood's power even to 
attempt ; and shows the larger mould of Arnold's intel- 
lect. A first-class genius would display the varying 
endowments of them both. 

Sohrab and Rustum is a still finer poem, because 
more human, and more complete in itself. The verse 
is not so devoid of epic swiftness. The powerful 
conception of the relations between the two chieftains, 
and the slaying of the son by the father, are tragical 
and heroic. The descriptive passage at the close, for 
diction and breadth of tone, would do honor to any 
living poet : — 

" But the majestic river floated on, 
Out of the mist and hum of that low land, 
Into the frosty starlight, and there moved, 
Rejoicing, through the hushed Chorasmian waste 
Under the solitary moon : he flowed 
Right for the Polar Star, past Orgunje, 
Brimming, and bright, and large : then sands begin 
To hem his watery march, and dam his streams, 
And split his currents ; that for many a league 
The shorn and parcelled Oxus strains along 
Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles, — 
Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had 
In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, 
A foiled circuitous wanderer : — till at last 
The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide 
His luminous home of waters opens, bright 
And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars 
Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea." 



PREFERENCE FOR THE ANTIQUE. 



95 



" Tristram and Iseult," an obscure, monotonous va- 
riation upon a well-worn theme, is far inferior to 
either of the foregoing episodes. " The Sick King 
in Bokhara " and " Mycerinus " are better works, but 
Arnold's narrative poems, and the " Empedocles on 
Etna," — his classical drama, — are studies, in an age 
which he deems uncreative, of as many forms of early 
art, and successively undertaken in default of con- 
genial latter-day themes. Their author, a poet and 
scholar, offers, as an escape from certain heresies, 
and as a substitute for poetry of the natural kind, a 
recurrence to antique or mediaeval thought and forms. 
However well executed, is this a genuine addition to 
literature ? I have elsewhere said that finished repro- 
ductions cannot be accepted in lieu of a nation's 
spontaneous song. 

Arnold thus explains his own position : " In the 
sincere endeavor to learn and practise, amid the 
bewildering confusion of our times, what is sound 
and true in poetical art, I seemed to myself to find 
the only sure guidance, the only solid footing, among 
the ancients. They, at any rate, knew what they 
wanted in Art, and we do not. It is this uncer- 
tainty which is disheartening, and not hostile criti- 
cism." This is frank and noteworthy language, but 
does not the writer protest too much? Are not his 
sadness and doubt an unconscious confession of 
his own special restrictions, — restrictions other than 
those which, as he perceives, belong to England in 
her weary age, or those which, in a period of transi- 
tion from the phenomenal to the scientific, are com- 
mon to the whole literary world ? Were he a greater 
poet, or even a small, sweet singer, would he stop to 
reason so curiously? Rather would he chant and 



Objective 
themes. 



Preface tc 
edition of 
1854. 



9 6 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 



His mental 
structure 
and atti- 
tude. 



Cp. " Poets 

of Amer- 
ica" : pp. 
339-341- 



chant away, to ease his quivering heartstrings of 
some impassioned strain. 

We cannot accept his implication that he was born 
too late, since by this very reflection of the unrest 
and bewilderment of our time he holds his represent- 
ative position in the present survey. The generation 
listens with interest to a thinker of his speculative 
cast. He is the pensive, doubting Hamlet of modern 
verse, saying of himself : " Dii me terrent, et Jupiter 
hostis ! Two kinds of dilettanti, says Goethe, there are 
in poetry : he who neglects the indispensable mechan- 
ical part, and thinks he has done enough if he shows 
spirituality and feeling; and he who seeks to arrive 
at poetry by mere mechanism, in which he can acquire 
an artisan's readiness, and is without soul and matter. 
And he adds, that the first does the most harm to 
Art, and the last to himself." Quite as frankly Ar- 
nold goes on to enroll himself among dilettanti of the 
latter class. These he places, inasmuch as they pre- 
fer Art to themselves, before those who, with less rev- 
erence, exhibit merely spirituality and feeling. Here, 
let me say, he is unjust to himself, for much of his 
verse combines beautiful and conscientious workman- 
ship with the purest sentiment, and has nothing of 
dilettanteism about it. This often is where he for- 
sakes his own theory, and writes subjectively. " The 
Buried Life," " A Summer Night," and a few other 
pieces in the same key, are to me the most poetical 
of his efforts, because they are the outpourings of his 
own heart, and show of what exalted tenderness and 
ideality he is capable. A note of ineffable sadness 
still arises through them all. A childlike disciple of 
Wordsworth, he is not, like his master, a law and 
comfort to himself; a worshipper of Goethe, he at- 



MENTAL STRUCTURE AND ATTITUDE. 



97 



tributes, with unwitting egotism, his inability to vie 
with the sage of Weimar, not to a deficiency in his 
own nature, but to the distraction of the age : — 

" But we, brought forth and reared in hours 
Of change, alarm, surprise, — 
What shelter to grow ripe is ours? 
What leisure to grow wise ? 

" Too fast we live, too much are tried, 
Too harassed, to attain 
Wordsworth's sweet calm, or Goethe's wide 
And luminous view to gain." 

Arnold falters upon the march, conscious of a mission 
too weighty for him to bear, — that of spiritualizing 
what he deems an era of unparalleled materialism. 
The age is dull and mean, he cries, 

" The time is out of joint ; O, cursed spite ! 
That ever I was born to set it right." 

And as Hamlet, in action, was inferior to lesser per- 
sonages around him, he thus yields to introspection, 
while protesting against it, and falls behind the bard 
of a fresher inspiration, or more propitious time. In 
all this we discern the burden of a thoughtful man, 
who in vain longs to create some masterpiece of art, 
and whose yearning and self-esteem make him loath 
to acknowledge his limitations, even to himself. 

In certain poems, breathing the spirit of the tired 
scholar's query, — " What is the use ? " he betrays a 
suspicion that knowledge is not of itself a joy, and 
an envy of the untaught, healthy children of the wild. 
Extremes meet, and this is but the old reaction from 
over-culture ; the desire of the wrestler for new strength 
from Mother Earth. "The Youth of Nature," "The 
Youth of Man," and "The Future," are the fruit of 
5 g 



Reaction 
from over- 
culture. 



9 8 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 



Clough and 
A mold. 



Thy r sis." 



these doubts and longings, and, at times, half sick of 
bondage, he is almost persuaded to be a wanderer and 
freeman. " The Scholar Gipsy " is a highly poetical 
composition, full of idyllic grace, and equally subtile 
in the beauty of its topic and thought. The poet, 
and his poet-friend, Arthur Hugh Clough, in their 
wanderings around Oxford, realize that the life of the 
vagrant "scholar poor" was finer than their own: — 

" For early didst thou leave the world, with powers 
Fresh, undiverted to the world without, 

Firm to their mark, not spent on other things : 
Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt, 

Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings. 
O Life, unlike to ours ! " 

In after years Clough himself broke away somewhat 
from the trammels which these lines deplore. Arnold 
says of him, in "Thyrsis," 

" It irked him to be here, — he could not rest. 
He loved each simple joy the country yields, 
He loved his mates ; but yet he could not keep, 
For that a shadow lowered on the fields. 

He went ! " 

But even Clough made no such approach as our own 
Thoreau to the natural freedom of which he was by 
spells enamored. And who can affirm that Thoreau 
truly found the secret of content ? Was not his ideal, 
even as he seemed to clutch it, as far as ever from 
his grasp ? 

" Thyrsis," Arnold's more recent idyl, — "a monody 
to commemorate the author's friend," — is the exqui- 
site complement of " The Scholar Gipsy." It is 
another, and one of the best, of the successful Eng- 



THE CRITICAL FACULTY IN POETS. 



99 



lish imitations of Bion and Moschus ; amon^ which 
" Lycidas " is the most famous, though some question 
whether Swinburne, in his " Ave atque Vale" has not 
surpassed them all. Before the appearance of the 
last-named elegy, I wrote of " Thyrsis " that it was 
noticeable for exhibiting the precise amount of aid 
which classicism can render to the modern poet As 
a threnode, nothing comparable to it had then appeared 
since the " Adonais " of Shelley. If not its author's 
farewell to verse, it has been his latest poem of any 
note ; and, like " The Scholar Gipsy," probably ex- 
hibits the highest reach of melody, vigor, and imagi- 
nation, which it is within his power to show us. 

That the bent of Arnold's faculty lies in the direc- 
tion rather of criticism and argument than of imagi- 
native literature, is evident from the increase of his 
prose-work in volume and significance. Some of the 
most perfect criticism ever written is to be found in 
his essays, of which that "On Translating Homer" 
will serve for an example. He carries easily in prose 
those problems of religion, discovery, and aesthetics 
which so retard his verse ; is thoroughly at home in 
polemic discussion, and a most keen and resolute 
opponent to all who heretically gainsay him. The 
critical faculty is not of itself incompatible with im- 
aginative and creative power. We are indebted for 
lasting aesthetic canons to great poets of various eras. 
Even the fragmentary comments and marginalia of 
Goethe, Byron, Landor, Coleridge, etc., are full of 
point and suggestion. For one, I believe that, as able 
lawyers are the best judges of a lawyer's powers and 
attainments, so the painters, sculptors, musicians, and 
poets are most competent to decide upon the merits 
of works in their respective departments of art, — 

LofC. 



Prose- 
writings. 



The criti- 
cal facility 
in poets. 
Cp. " Poets 
of A mer- 
ica " .* pp. 
326-338. 



IOO 



BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. 



Bryan Wal- 
ler Procter : 
born in 
Wiltshire, 
Nov. 21, 

1787. 



though not always, being human, openly honest and 
unprejudiced. Doubtless many lawyers will assent to 
the first portion of this statement, and scout the 
remainder. But, at all events, poets, like other men, 
are wont to become more thoughtful as they grow 
older, and I do not see that the work of the masters 
has suffered for it. Arnold, however, is so much 
greater as a writer of critical prose than as a poet, 
that people have learned where to look for his genius, 
and where for his talent and sensibility. 

His essays are illuminated by his poetic imagina- 
tion, and he thus becomes a better prose-writer than 
a mere didactician ever could be. In fine, we may 
regard Matthew Arnold's poetry as an instance of what 
elevated verse, in this period, can be written, with 
comparatively little spontaneity, by a man whose vig- 
orous intellect is etherealized by culture and deliber- 
ately creates for itself an atmosphere of " sweetness 
and light." 



IV. 

A wide leap, indeed, from Matthew Arnold to 
" Barry Cornwall," — under which familiar and mu- 
sical lyronym Bryan Waller Procter has had more 
singers of his songs than students of his graver 
pages. No lack of spontaneity here ! Freedom is 
the life and soul of his delicious melodies, composed 
during thraldom to the most prosaic work, yet tune- 
ful as the carols of a lark upon the wing. It is hard 
to think of Procter as a lawyer, who used to chant 
to himself in a London omnibus, on his daily jour- 
neys to and from the city. He is a natural vocalist, 
were it not for whon almost affirm that 



SPECIAL QUALITY OF THE SONG. 



IOI 



song-making, the sweetest feature of England's most 
poetical period, is a lost art, or, at least, suspended 
during the present reign. There never was a time 
when little poems were more abundant, or more care- 
fully finished, but a lyric may be exquisite and yet 
not possess the attributes of a successful song. 

I can recall a multitude of such productions, each 
well worth a place in any lyrical " treasury " ; among 
them, some that are graceful, touching, refined to per- 
fection ; yet all addressed as much to the eye as to 
the ear, — to be read with tone and feeling, it may be, 
but not really demanding to be sung. The special 
quality of the song is that, however carelessly fash- 
ioned, it seems alive with the energy of music ; the 
voice of its stanzas has a constant tendency to break 
into singing, as a bird, running swiftly, breaks into 
flying, half unawares. You at once associate true 
songs with music, and if no tunes have been set to 
them, they haunt the mind and "beat time to noth- 
ing " in the brain. The spirit of melody goes hunt- 
ing for them, just as a dancing-air seeks and enters 
the feet of all within its circuit. Procter's lays have 
this vocal quality, and are of the genuine kind. To 
freedom and melody he adds more refinement than 
any song-writer of his time, and has a double right to 
his station in the group under review. 

His stanzaic poems have, in fact, the rare merit of 
uniting the grace and imagery of the lyric to the 
music and fashion of song. It is well to look at this 
conjunction. The poet Stoddard, in a preface to his 
selection of English Madrigals, pronounces the lyric 
to be " a purer, as it certainly was an earlier, mani- 
festation of the element which underlies the song," 
and says that " there are no songs, modernly speak- 



Special 
quality of 
the song. 



" Melodies 
and Madri- 
gals,'''' New 
York, 1866. 



102 



BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. 



Barry Corn- 
wall a lyrist 
and true 
song-writer. 



ing, in Shakespeare and the Elizabethan dramatists, 
but lyrics in abundance." His distinction between a 
lyric and a song is that the one is " a simple, un- 
studied expression of thought, sentiment, or passion; 
the other its expression according to the mode of 
the day." Unquestionably the abundant songs of 
the eighteenth century, and those, even, of the gen- 
eration when Moore was at his prime, are greatly in- 
ferior as poetry to the lyrics of the early dramatists. 
Yet, were not the latter songs as well, save that the 
mode of their day was more delicate, ethereal, fine, 
and strong? It seems to me that such of the early 
lyrics as were written to music possess thereby the 
greater charm. And the songs of Barry Cornwall, 
beyond those of any other modern, have an excel- 
lence of " mode " which renders them akin to the 
melodies of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Heywood, 
Fletcher, and to the choicer treasures of Davison, 
and of the composers, Byrd, Wilbye, and Weelkes. 
They are, at once, delightful to poets and dear to 
the singing commonalty. I refer, of course, to their 
pervading character. It may be that none are so ab- 
solutely flawless as the Bugle-Song of Tennyson. The 
melody and dying fall of that lyric are almost with- 
out comparison this side of Amiens' ditties in " As 
You Like It" and Ariel's in "The Tempest." But 
how few there are of Procter's numerous songs which 
stand lower than the nearest place beneath it ! Many 
of them excel it in swiftness, zest, outdoor quality, 
and would be more often trolled along the mountain- 
side, upon the ocean, or under the greenwood-tree. 

The fountain of Procter's melody has not so long 
been sealed as to exclude him from our synod of the 
later poets, although — how strange it seems ! — he 



LEIGH HUNT. 



103 



was the schoolfellow of Byron at Harrow, and won 
popular successes when he was the friend and as- 
sociate of Hunt, Lamb, and Keats. Born ten years 
earlier than Hood, he was before the public in time 
to act the prophet, and in the dedication of " The 
Genealogists " predicted the humorist's later fame. 
He dates back in years, not in literature, almost as 
far as Landor, and like him was among the foremost 
to discern the new spirit of poetry and to assist in 
giving it form. In a preface to his " Dramatic Scenes " 
he tells us : " The object that I had in view, when I 
wrote these scenes, was to try the effect of a more 
natural style than that which has for a long time pre- 
vailed in our dramatic literature. I have endeavored 
to mingle poetical imagery with natural emotion." 
Like Landor, also, he performed some of his best 
work at dates well toward the middle of this cen- 
tury ; in fact, it is upon songs given to the public 
during the fourth and fifth decades that his influence 
and fame depend. This has led me to consider him 
among recent poets, rather than in his youthful atti- 
tude as the pupil of Leigh Hunt. 

Hunt's poetic mission (taken apart from his career 
as a radical) was of note between 18 15 and 1830, and 
was that of a propagandist. Without much originality, 
he was a poet of sweetness, fluency, and sensibility, 
who became filled with the art-spirit of Keats and 
his masters, and both by precept and example was a 
potent force in its dissemination. Beyond the posi- 
tion attained as a shining light of what was derisively 
called "The Cockney School," Leigh Hunt made little 
progress. He lived, it is true, until 1859, — a writer 
of dainty verse and most delightful prose, beloved by 
the reading world, and viewed with a queer mixture 



A pioneer. 



"James 
Henry 
Leigh 
Hunt. 
1784-1859. 



104 



BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. 



Procter's 
dramatic 
genius. 



of pity, reverence, and affection, by his younger 
brethren of the craft. Procter's early studies were 
influenced by Keats and Hunt, to whose work he was 
attracted by affinity with the methods of their Eliza- 
bethan models, as opposed to those of Byron and Scott. 
His nature, also, was too robust — and too aesthetic — 
to acquire any taste for the metaphysical processes 
of Wordsworth, which were ultimately to shape the 
mind, even as Keats begat the body, of the idyllic 
Victorian School. The fact that Procter's genius was 
essentially dramatic finally gave him a position inde- 
pendent of Keats, and, against external restrictions, 
drew him in advance of Hunt, who — whatever he may 
have been as critic and essayist — was in some respects 
the lesser poet. Nevertheless, those restrictions com- 
pelled Procter, as Landor was compelled, to forego the 
work at which he would have been greatest, and to 
exercise his gift only in a fragmentary or lyrical man- 
ner. He found the period, between the outlets of 
expression afforded by the newspaper and the novel, 
unsuited to the reception of objectively dramatic verse, 
though well enough disposed toward that of an intro- 
spective kind. In short, Procter at this time was — as 
Miss Hillard has felicitously entitled his early friend, 
Thomas Lovell Beddoes — a " strayed singer," — an 
Elizabethan who had wandered into the nineteenth 
century. His organization included an element of 
practical common-sense, which led him to adapt him- 
self, as far as possible, to circumstances, and, forbear- 
ing a renewal of sustained and lonely explorations, to' 
vent his natural impulses in the " short swallow-flights 
of song " to which he owes his reputation. The love 
of minstrelsy is perpetual. Barry Cornwall, the song- 
writer, has found a place among his people, and 



EARLY WRITINGS. 



105 



developed to the rarest excellence at least one faculty 
of his poetic gift. 

But we have, first, to consider him as a pupil of 
the renaissance : a poet of what may be termed the 
interregnum between Byron and Tennyson, — for the 
Byronic passion is absolutely banished from the idyllic 
strains of Tennyson and his followers, who, neverthe- 
less, betray the influences of Wordsworth and Keats 
in wedded force. Procter's early writings were em- 
braced in three successive volumes of Dramatic Scenes, 
etc., which appeared in 1819-21, and met with a 
friendly reception. Some of the plays were headed 
by quotations from Massinger, Webster, and such 
dramatists, and otherwise indicated the author's choice 
of models. His verse, though uneven, was occasion- 
ally poetical and strong. There is breadth of hand- 
ling in these lines from " The Way to Conquer " : — 

" The winds 
Moan and make music through its halls, and there 
The mountain-loving eagle builds his home. 
But all 's a waste : for miles and miles around 
There 's not a cot." 

An extract from a poem entitled " Flowers " has the 
beauty of favorite passages in "The Winter's Tale" 
and "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," — the flavor and 
picturesque detail of Shakespeare's blossomy descrip- 
tions : — 

" There the rose unveils 
Her breast of beauty, and each delicate bud 
O' the season comes in turn to bloom and perish. 
But first of all the violet, with an eye 
Blue as the midnight heavens, the frail snowdrop, 
Born of the breath of Winter, and on his brow 
Fixed like a pale and solitary star ; 
5* 



His early 
writings, 
1819-21. 



io6 



BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. 



Influence 
upon other 
poets. 



The languid hyacinth, and wild primrose, 
And daisy trodden down like modesty ; 
The foxglove, in whose drooping bells the be 
Makes her sweet music ; the narcissus (named 
From him who died for love) ; the tangled woodbine, 
Lilacs, and flowering limes, and scented thorns, 
And some from whom voluptuous winds of June 
Catch their perfumings." 

It may be noted that Procter's early verse had an 
effect upon poets who have since obtained distinction, 
and who improved on the hints afforded them. Two 
of the pieces in the first and second volumes, " A 
Vision " and " Portraits," contain the germs of Ten- 
nyson's " Dream of Fair Women," and of his best- 
known classical poem. The " Lines to " and 

" Lines on the Death of a Friend " bear a striking 
resemblance in metre, rhythm, and technical " effects," 
to those wild and musical lyrics written long after- 
ward by Edgar A. Poe, " The Sleeper " and " The 
City in, the Sea." In several of his metrical tales, 
Procter, no less than Keats and Hunt, went to that 
Italian source which, since the days of Chaucer, has 
been a fountain-spring of romance for the poet's use. 
His " Sicilian Story " is an inferior study upon the 
theme of Keats's " Isabella " ; and some of his other 
themes from Boccaccio have been handled by later 
poets, — the story of " Love Cured by Kindness," by 
Mrs. Lewes, and that of "The Falcon," by our own 
Longfellow. Among his dramatic sketches, " The 
Way to Conquer," " The Return of Mark Antony," 
and especially " Julian the Apostate," have admirable 
scenes ; their verse displays simplicity, passion, sen- 
suousness ; one derives from them the feeling that 
their author might have been a vigorous dramatic 
poet in a more suitable era. As it was, he stood in 



MELODIOUS LYRICS. 



107 



the front rank of his contemporaries, not only as one 
of the brilliant writers for The London Magazine, but 
respected by practical judges who cater for the public 
taste. His stage tragedy, Mirandola, was brought out 
at the Covent Garden theatre, apparently with suc- 
cess. Macready, Charles Kemble, and Miss Foote 
figured in the cast. It is an acting drama, with a plot 
resembling that of Byron's " Parisina." A volume 
of two years' later date exhibits less progress in con- 
structive power. It contained " The Flood of Thes- 
saly," "The Girl of Provence," "The Letter of Boc- 
caccio," "The Fall of Saturn," etc., — poems which 
show greater finish, but little originality, and more 
of the influence of Hunt and Keats. Throughout 
the five books under review, the blank-verse, some- 
times effective, as in " Marcelia," is often jagged 
and diffuse. The classical studies are not equal to 
those of the poet's last-named associate. In Procter's 
lyrical verses, however, we now begin to see the 
groundwork of his later eminence as a writer of Eng- 
lish songs. 

Among the sweetest of these melodies was " Golden- 
tressed Adelaide," a ditty warbled for the gentle child 
whose after-career was to be a dream-life of poesy 
and saintliness, ending all too early, and bearing to 
his own the relation of a song within a song. I give 
the opening stanza : — 

" Sing, I pray, a little song, 

Mother dear ! 
' Neither sad, nor very long : 
It is for a little maid, 
Golden-tressed Adelaide ! 
Therefore let it suit a merry, merry ear, 
Mother dear ! " 



" Miran- 
do/a," 1 82 1 



A delaide 

Anne 

Procter. 



io8 



BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. 



The poet's 
home. 



The poet had married, it is seen, and other chil- 
dren blessed his tranquil home, where life glided away 
as he himself desired, gently : — 

" As we sometimes glide, 
Through a quiet dream ! " 

The most perfect lyric ever addressed by a poet 
to his wife is the little song, known, through Neu- 
komm's melody, in so many homes : — 

" How many summers, love, 
Have I been thine ? " 

The final stanza is exquisite : — 

"Ah! — with what thankless heart 

I mourn and sing ! 
Look, where our children start, 

Like sudden Spring ! 
With tongues all sweet and low, 

Like a pleasant rhyme, 
They tell how much I owe 

To thee and Time ! " 

After Procter's marriage his muse was silent for a 
while ; partly, no doubt, from a growing conviction 
that no mission was then open to a dramatic poet ; 
partly, from the »ecessity for close professional work, 
under the domestic obligations he had assumed. 
What was lost to art was gained in the happiness of 
the artist's home ; and if he escaped the discipline 
of learning in suffering what he taught in song, I, 
for one, do not regret this enviable exception to a 
very bitter rule. 

The Muse cannot be wholly banished, even by the 
strong felicity of wedded love. She enters again and 
again, and will not be denied. Barry Cornwall's voice 



THE DRAMATIC AND LYRICAL FACULTIES. 



109 



came back to him, after a moulting period ; and 
although he wrote no plays, he exercised it in that 
portion of dramatic composition which, like music in 
every-day life, is used as a relief and beguilement, — 
the utterance of expressive song. 

Dramatic poetry, embracing in completeness every 
department of verse, seems to reach a peculiar excel- 
lence in its lyrical interludes. Procter says that " the 
songs which occur in dramas are generally more nat- 
ural than those which proceed from the author in 
person," and gives some reasons therefor. My own 
belief is that the dramatic and lyrical faculties are 
correlative, a lyric being a dramatic and musical out- 
burst of thought, passion, sorrow, or delight ; and 
never was there a more dramatic song-writer than is 
Barry Cornwall. His English Songs appeared at a 
time when, — setting aside the folk-minstrelsy of Scot- 
land and Ireland, — the production of genuine lyrics 
for music was, as we have seen, almost a lost art. 
He declared of it, however, " The spring will re- 
turn ! " and was the fulfiller of his own prediction. 
By the agreement of musicians and poets, his songs, 
whether as melodies or lyrics, approach perfection, 
and thousands of sweet voices have paid tribute to 
their beauty, unconscious of the honeyed lips from 
which it sprung. Mr. Stoddard — than whom there 
is no higher authority with respect to English lyrical 
poetry — judges Procter to be its " most consummate 
master of modern days " : in fact, he questions 
"whether all the early English poets ever produced 
so many and such beautiful songs as Barry Corn- 
wall," and says that " a selection of their best would 
be found inferior as a whole to the one hundred and 
seventy-two little songs in Mr. Procter's volume, . — 



The dra- 
matic and 
lyrical fac- 
ulties re- 
lated. 



no 



BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. 



Procter's 
" English 
Songs," 
1832. 



narrower in range, less abundant in measures, and in- 
finitely less pure as expressions of love." 

There are many who would demur to this compar- 
ative estimate, and for whom the starry Elizabethan 
lyrics still shine peerless, yet they too are charmed 
by the spirit, alternately tender and blithesome, of 
Procter's songs ; by their unconscious grace, change- 
ful as the artless and unexpected attitudes of a fair 
girl ; by their absolute musical quality and compre- 
hensive range. They include ' all poetic feelings, from 
sweetest melancholy to " glad animal joy." Some 
heartstring answers to each, for each is the fine ex- 
pression of an emotion ; nor is the emotion simulated 
for the song's sake. Now, how different in this re- 
spect are Barry Cornwall's melodies from the still- 
life lyrics, addressing themselves to the eye, of many 
recent poets ! How assured in their audible loveli- 
ness ! Sometimes fresh with the sprayey breeze of 
ocean, and echoing the innumerous laughter of waves 
that tumble round the singer's isle : — 

"The sea! the sea! the open sea! 
The blue, the fresh, the ever free ! 
Without a mark, without a bound, 
It runneth the earth's wide regions round ; 
It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies; 
Or like a cradled creature lies. 



"I never was on the dull, tame shore, 
But I loved the great sea more and more, 
And backwards flew to her billowy breast, 
Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest; 
And a mother she was and is to me ; 
For I was born on the open sea ! " 

It is a human soul that wanders with "The Stormy 



ENGLISH SONGS: 



III 



Petrel," dips its pinions in the brine, and has the lib- 
erty of Prospero's tricksy spirit, " be 't to fly, to swim, 
to dive " : — 

" A thousand miles from land are we, 
Tossing about on the roaring sea ; 
From billow to bounding billow cast, 
Like fleecy snow on the stormy blast : 



Up and down ! Up and down ! 
From the base of the wave to the billow's crown, 
And amidst the flashing and feathery foam 
The- Stormy Petrel finds a home!" 

The zest and movements of these and a few kindred 
melodies have brought them into special favor. Their 
virile, barytone quality is dominant in the superb 
" Hunting Song," with its refrain awakening the lusty 
morn : — 

" Now, thorough the copse, where the fox is found, 
And over the stream, at a mighty bound, 
And over the high lands, and over the low, 
O'er furrows, o'er meadows, the hunters go ! 
Away ! — as a hawk flies full at its prey, 
So flieth the hunter, away, — away ! 
From the burst at the cover till set of sun, 
When the red fox dies, and — the day is done ! 

Hark, hark ! — What sound on the wind is borne ? 

'Tis the conquering voice of the hunter's horn. 
The horn, — the horn ! 

The merry, bold voice of the hunter's horn.'''' 

Procter's convivial glees are the choruses of robust 
and gallant banqueters, and would stifle in the throat 
of a sensual debauchee. The Vine Song, — 

" Sing ! — Who sings 
To her who weareth a hundred rings ? " — 



Fresh and 

buoyant 

music. 



112 



BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. 



Lyrical 
variety. 



has the buoyancy of Wolfe's favorite, " How stands 
the Glass around ? " Among the rest,C" Drink, and 
fill the Night with Mirth ! " and " King Death " are 
notable, the first for its Anacreontic lightness, and 
the last for a touch of the grim revelry which so fas- 
cinates us in " Don Giovanni," and reflects a perfectly 
natural though grotesque element of our complex 
mould. 

In one of the many editions of Barry Cornwall's 
lyrical poems I find two hundred and forty songs, of 
surprising range and variety : songs of the chase, the 
forest, and the sea ; lullabies, nocturnes, greetings, and 
farewells ; songs of mirth and sorrow ; few martial 
lays, but many which breathe of love in stanzas that 
are equally fervent, melodious, and pure. Some have 
a rare and subtile delicacy, so characteristic of this 
poet as at once to mark their authorship. Such is 
the melody, commencing 

" Sit down, sad soul, and count 
The moments flying " ; 

such, also, "A Petition to Time"; and such the lyric, 
entitled " Life," the beautiful dirge, " Peace ! what can 
Tears avail?" and "The Poet's Song to his Wife," 
— already quoted. Another class of songs, to which 
earlier reference has been made, mostly composed in 
a major key, may fairly be compared with the work of 
other poets. Bayard Taylor's early lyrics, " The Mar- 
iners " and " Wind at Sea," have the same clear, 
healthy ring, and his " Bedouin Song," in fine poetic 
quality, is not excelled by any similar effort of the 
British lyrist. Again, without knowing the author, 
we might assume that Emerson had traced the royal 
lines descriptive of " The Blood Horse " : — 



HIS OLD AGE. 



113 



" Gamarra is a dainty steed, 
Strong, black, and of a noble breed, 
Full of fire, and full of bone, 
With all his line of fathers known ; 
Fine his nose, his nostrils thin, 
But blown abroad by the pride within ! 
His mane is like a river flowing^ 
And his eyes like embers glowing 
In the darkness of the night, 
And his pace as swift as light." 

More than other poets, Barry Cornwall tempts the 
writer to linger on the path of criticism and make 
selection of the jewels scattered here and there. 
Like the man in the enchanted cavern, one cannot 
refrain from picking up a ruby or an emerald, though 
forbidden by the compact made. The later chips 
from Procter's dramatic workshop are superior to his 
early blank-verse in wisdom, strength, and beauty. 
It is a pity, that, after all, they are but " Dramatic 
Fragments," and not passages taken from complete 
and heroic plays. Bryan Waller Procter, restricted 
from the production of such masterworks, at least did 
what he could. For some years before his recent 
death .the world listened in vain for the voice of this 
sweet singer. He lingered to an extreme old age : 
a white-haired, silent minstrel, into whose secluded 
mind the reproach would have fallen unheeded, had 
the rosy-cheeked boys, whom Heine pictures, sprung 
around him, placed the shattered harp in his trembling 
hand, and said, laughing, " Thou indolent, gray-headed 
old man, sing us again songs of the dreams of thy 
youth ! " 



"Dramatic 
Frag- 
ments." 



B. IV. P. 
died in Low 
I don, Oct. 4, 
1874. 



m 



CHAPTER IV. 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



A spirihial 

te7npera- 

me?it. 



I. 

THERE are some poets whom we picture to our- 
selves as surrounded with aureolas ; who are 
clothed in so pure an atmosphere that when we speak 
of them, — though with a critical purpose and in this 
exacting age, — our language must express that tender 
fealty which sanctity and exaltation compel from all 
mankind. We are not sure of our judgment : ordinary 
tests fail us ; the pearl is a pearl, though discolored ; 
fire is fire, though shrouded in vapor, or tinged with 
murky hues. We do not see clearly, for often our 
eyes are blinded with tears ; — we love, we cherish, 
we revere. 

The memory and career of Elizabeth Barrett Brown- 
ing appear to us like some beautiful ideal. Nothing 
is earthly, though all is human ; a spirit is passing 
before our eyes, yet of like passions with ourselves, 
and encased in a frame so delicate that every fibre is 
alive with feeling and tremulous with radiant thought. 
Her genius certainly may be compared to those sensi- 
tive, palpitating flames, which harmonically rise and 
fall in response to every sound-vibration near them. 
Her whole being was rhythmic, and, in a time when 
art is largely valued for itself alone, her utterances 
were the expression of her inmost soul. 



THE CHIEF OF WOMAN-POETS. 



115 



I have said that while the composite period has 
exhibited many phases of poetic art, it is not difficult, 
with respect to each of them taken singly, to find some 
former epoch more distinguished. The Elizabethan 
age surpassed it in dramatic creation, and in those 
madrigals and canzonets which — to transpose Men- 
delssohn's fancy — are music without harping ; the 
Protectorate developed more epic grandeur, — the 
Georgian era, more romantic sentiment and strength 
of wing. Recent progress has been phenomenal, 
chiefly, in variety, finish, average excellence of work. 
To this there is one exception. The Victorian era, 
with its wider range of opportunities for women, has 
been illumined by the career of the greatest female 
poet that England has produced, — nor only England, 
but the whole territory of the English language ; more 
than this, the most inspired woman, so far as known, 
of all who have composed in ancient or modern 
tongues, or flourished in any land or time. 

What have we of Sappho, beyond a. few exquisite 
fragments, a disputed story, the broken strings of a 
remote and traditional island-lyre ? Yet, from Sappho 
down, including the poetry of Southern and Northern 
Europe and the whole melodious greensward of Eng- 
lish song, the remains of what woman are left to us, 
which in quantity and inspiration compete with those 
of Mrs. Browning? What poet of her own sex, ex- 
cept Sappho, did she herself find worthy a place 
among the forty immortals grouped in the hemicycle 
of her own " Vision of Poets " ? Take the volume of 
her collected writings, — with so much that we might 
omit, with so many weaknesses and faults, — and what 
riches it contains! How different, too, from other 
recent work, thoroughly her own, eminently that of a 



Former pe- 
riods more 
emi?ient in 
special 
quality, 



but the Vic- 
torian has 
produced 
the greatest 
of woman- 
poets. 



n6 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



Her years 
of unmar- 
ried life. 



Elizabeth 
Barrett 
Barrett : 
bom at 
Hope End, 
near Led- 
bury, 1809. 



"An Essay 
on Mind, 
with O titer 
Poems" 
1826. 



woman, — a Christian sibyl, priestess of the melody, 
heroism, and religion of the modern world ! 



II. 

What is the story of her maidenhood? Not only 
of those early years which, no matter how long we 
continue, are said to make up the greater portion of 
our life ; but also of an unwedded period which 
lasted to that ominous year, the thirty-seventh, which 
has ended the song of other poets at a date when 
her own — so far as the world heard her — had but 
just begun. How grew our Psyche in her chrysalid 
state ? For she was like the insect that weaves itself 
a shroud, yet by some inward force, after a season, is 
impelled to break through its covering, and come out 
a winged tiger-moth, emblem of spirituality in its birth, 
and of passion in the splendor of its tawny dyes. 

Elizabeth Barrett Barrett was born of wealthy par- 
ents, in 1809, and began her literary efforts almost 
contemporaneously with Tennyson. Apparently, — for 
the world has not yet received the inner history of a 
life, which, after all, was so purely intellectual that 
only herself could have revealed it to us, — appar- 
ently, I say, she was the idol of her kindred ; and 
especially of a father who wondered at her genius 
and encouraged the projects of her eager youth. 
Otherwise, although she was a rhymer at the age of 
ten, how could she have published, in her seventeenth 
year, her didactic Essay, composed in heroics after 
the method of Pope? Apparently, too, she had a 
mind of that fine northern type which hungers after 
learning for its own sake, and to which the study of 
books or nature is an instinctive and insatiable de- 



READING AND THE IMAGINATION. 



11/ 



sire. If Mrs. Browning left no formal record of her 
youth, the spirit of it is indicated so plainly in " Au- 
rora Leigh," that we scarcely need the letter : — 

" Books, books, books ! 
I had found the secret of a garret-room 
Piled high with cases in my father's name ; 



The first book first. And how I felt it beat 
Under my pillow, in the morning's dark, 
An hour before the sun would let me read! 
My books! 

At last, because the time was ripe, 
I chanced upon the poets." 

Doubtless this sleepless child was one to whom her 
actual surroundings, even if observed, seemed less 
real than the sights in dreamland and cloudland re- 
vealed to her by simply opening the magical covers 
of a printed book. An imaginative girl sometimes 
becomes so entranced with the ideal world as to 
quite forego the billing and cooing which attend upon 
the springtime of womanhood. Such natures often 
awake to the knowledge that they have missed some- 
thing: love was everywhere around them, but their 
eyes were fixed upon the stars, and they perceived it 
not. This abnormal growth is perilous, and to the 
feebler class of dreamers, who have poetic sensibility 
without true constructive power, insures blight, lone- 
liness, premature decay. For the born artist, such 
experiences in youth not only are inevitable, but are 
the training which shapes them for their after work. 
The fittest survive the test. 

Miss Barrett's early feasts were of an omnivorous 
Kind, the best school-regimen for genius : — 



Influence of 
reading on 
the imagi- 
nation. 



n8 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



Unconsciozts 
training 
of ge?iitis. 
Cp. "Poets 
of Amer- 
ica"; p. 
3°7- 



Herclassi- 
lal studies. 



" I read books bad and good — some bad and good 
At once : . 

And being dashed 
From error on to error, every turn 
Still brought me nearer to the central truth." 

A gifted mind in youth has an unconsciousness of 
evil, and an affinity for the beautiful and true, which 
enable it, when given the freedom of a library, to as- 
similate what is suited to its needs. Fact and fiction 
are inwardly digested, and in maturer years the logi- 
cal faculty involuntarily assorts and distributes them. 
Aurora reads her books, 

" Without considering whether they were fit 
To do me good. Mark, there. We get no good 
By being ungenerous, even to a book, 
And calculating profits . . so much help 
By so much reading. It is rather when 
We gloriously forget ourselves and plunge 
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, 
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth — 
'Tis then we get the right good from a book." 

Much of this reading was of that grave character 
to which court-maidens of Roger Ascham's time were 
wonted, for her juvenile " Essay on Mind " evinced a 
knowledge of Plato, Bacon, and others of the world's 
great thinkers : I do not say familiarity with them ; 
scholars know what that word means, and how loosely 
such terms are bandied. She gained that general 
conception of each, similar to what we learn of a 
man upon first acquaintance, and often not far wrong. 

With time and occasion afterward came the more 
disciplinary process of her education. Fortunate in- 
fluences, possibly those of her father, — if we may still 
follow "Aurora Leigh," — guided her in the direction 



HUGH STUART BOYD. 



II 9 



of studies as refining as they were severe. She read 
Latin and Greek. Now, it is noteworthy that a girl's 
intellect is more adroit in acquirement, not only of 
the languages, but of pure mathematics, than that of 
the average boy. Any one trained at the desks of a 
New England high-school is aware of this. In later 
years the woman very likely will stop acquiring, while 
the man still plods along and grows in breadth and 
accuracy. Miss Barrett became a loving student of 
Greek, and we shall see that it greatly influenced her 
literary progress. 

Among her maturer friends was the sweetly gentle 
and learned Hugh Stuart Boyd, to whom in his blind- 
ness she read the Attic dramatists, and under whose 
guidance she explored a remarkably wide field of 
Grecian philosophy and song. What more beautiful 
subject for a modern painter than the girl Elizabeth, 
— " that slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark 
curls falling on each side of a most expressive face, 
large tender eyes richly fringed by dark eyelashes, 
and a smile like a sunbeam," — than this ethereal 
creature seated at the feet of the blind old scholar, 
her face aglow with the rhapsody of the sonorous 
drama, from which she read of CEdipus, until 

"the reader's voice dropped lower 
When the poet called him blind ! " 

Here was the daughter that Milton should have 
had ! An oft-quoted stanza from her own " Wine of 
Cyprus," addressed to her master in after years, may 
be taken for the legend of the picture : — 

" And I think of those long mornings, 
« Which my Thought goes far to seek, 

When, betwixt the folio's turnings, 
Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek. 



Hugh 

Stuart 
Boyd. 
1782 -1848. 



Her portrait 
in Miss Md- 
ford's "Rec- 
ollections of 
a Literary 
Lifer 



120 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



Beneficent 
effect of 
culture. 
Cp." Poets 
of Amer- 
ica'"' : pp. 
109, 135. 



Past the pane the mountain spreading, 
Swept the sheep-bell's tinkling noise, 

While a girlish voice was reading, 
Somewhat low for afs and oz's." 

Aside from repeated indications in her other writing, 
this graceful poem shows the liberal extent of her 
delightful classical explorations. Homer, Pindar, An- 
acreon, — " ^Eschylus, the thunderous," " Sophocles, 
the royal," " Euripides, the human," " Plato, the divine 
one," — Theocritus, Bion, — not only among the im- 
mortal pagans did Miss Barrett follow hand in hand 
with Boyd, but attended him upon his favorite excur- 
sions to those " noble Christian bishops " — Chrysos- 
tom, Basil, Nazianzen — " who mouthed grandly the 
last Greek." 

What other woman and poet of recent times has 
passed through such a novitiate, in the academic 
groves and at the fountain-heads of poetry and 
thought ? I dwell upon Miss Barrett's culture, because 
I am convinced that it had much to do with her pre- 
eminence among female poets. Many a past genera- 
tion has produced its songsters of her sex, whose 
voices were stifled for want of atmosphere and train- 
ing. An auspicious era gave her an advantage over 
predecessors like Joanna Baillie, and her culture placed 
her immeasurably above Miss Landon, Mrs. Hemans, 
and others who flourished at the outset of her own 
career. Lady Barnard, the Baroness Nairn, Mrs. 
Norton, — women like these have written beautiful 
lyrics ; but here is one, equally feminine, yet with 
strength beyond them all, lifting herself to the height 
of sustained imagination. George Sand, Charlotte 
Bronte, and Mrs. Lewes have been her only com- 
peers, but of these the first — at least in form, and 



A LIBERAL SCHOLAR. 



121 



the two latter both in form and by instinct, have 
been writers of prose, before whom the poet takes 
precedence, by inherited and defensible prerogative. 

It was a piece of good fortune that Miss Barrett's 
technical study of roots, inflections, and what not was 
elementary and incidental. She and her companion 
read Greek for the music and wisdom of a literature 
which, as nations ripen and grow old, still holds its 
own, — an exponent of pure beauty and the univer- 
sal mind. The result would furnish a potent example 
for those who hold, with Professor Tayler Lewis, that 
the classical tongues should be studied chiefly for the 
sake of their literature. She was not a scholar, in 
the grammarian's sense ; but broke the shell of a 
language for the meat which it contained. Hence 
her reading was so varied as to make her the most 
powerful ally of the classicists among popular au- 
thors. Her poetical instinct for meanings was equal 
to Shelley's ; — as for Keats, he created a Greece and 
an Olympus of his own. 

Her first venture of significance was in the field 
of translation. Prometheus Bound, and Miscellaneous 
Poems, was published in her twenty-fourth year. The 
poems were equally noticeable for faults and excel- 
lences, of which we have yet to speak. The transla- 
tion was at that time a unique effort for a young lady, 
and good practice ; but abounded in grotesque pecul- 
iarities, and in fidelity did not approach the modern 
standard. In riper years she freed it from her early 
mannerism, and recast it in the shape now left to us, 
" in expiation," she said, " of a sin of my youth, with 
the sincerest application of my mature mind." This 
later version of a most sublime tragedy is more poet- 
ical than any other 6f equal correctness, and has the 
6 



Her scholar- 
ship liberal, 
but not pe- 
dantic. 



"Prome- 
theus Bound, 
and Miscel- 
laneous 
Poems" 
1833. 



122 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



Her classi- 
cism distinct 
from Lan- 
der's. 



fire and vigor of a master-hand. No one has suc- 
ceeded better than its author in capturing with rhymed 
measures the wilful rushing melody of the tragic 
chorus. Her other translations were executed for her 
own pleasure, and it rarely was her pleasure to be 
exactly faithful to her text. She was honest enough 
to call them what they are ; and we must own that 
her " Paraphrases on " Theocritus, Homer, Apuleius, 
etc., are enjoyable poems in themselves, preserving 
the spirit of their originals, yet graceful with that 
freedom of which Shelley's " Hymn to Mercury " is 
the most winsome English exemplar since Chapman's 
time. 

Our poet was always healthful and at ease wher- 
ever her classicism suggested the motive of her own 
song. " The Dead Pan " is an instance of her pe- 
culiar utilization of Greek tradition, and in other 
pieces her antique touches are frequent. Late in life, 
when unquestionably failing, — her eyes growing dim 
and her poetic force abated, — amid a peal of verses, 
that sound to me like sweet bells jangled, there is no 
clearer strain than that of " A Musical Instrument." 
For a moment, indeed, as she sang a melody of the 
pastoral god, her 

"sun on the hill forgot to die, 
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly 
Came back to dream on the river." 

A distinction between Landor's workmanship and 
that of Mrs. Browning was, that the former rarely 
used his classicism allegorically as a vehicle for mod- 
ern sentiment ; the latter, who did not write and think 
as a Greek, goes to the antique for illustration of her 
own faith and conceptions. 



ILLNESS AND SECLUSION 



123 



Of Miss Barrett's life we now catch glimpses through 
the kindly eyes of Miss Mitford, who became her near 
friend in 1836. She had entered upon a less se- 
cluded period, and probably the four years which fol- 
lowed the appearance of her " Prometheus " were as 
happy as any of her maidenhood. But, always fragile, 
in 1837 she broke a blood-vessel of the lungs; and 
after a lingering convalescence was again prostrated 
in 1839 by the death of her favorite brother, — 
drowned in her sight off the bar of Torquay. Months 
elapsed before she could be removed to her father's 
house, there to enter upon that absolute cloister-life 
which continued for nearly seven years. It was the 
life of a couch-ridden invalid, restricted to a large but 
darkened chamber, and forbidden all society but that 
of a few dear friends. I think of her, however, in 
that classic room as of one shut up in some belve- 
dere, where, by means of a camera, the outer world is 
reflected upon the table at your breast. For she re- 
turned to her books as a diversion from her thoughts, 
and with an eagerness that her physicians could not 
restrict. Miss Mitford says that she was now " read- 
ing almost every book worth reading in almost every 
language, and giving herself, heart and soul, to that 
poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess." 
The creative faculty reasserted itself; the moon will 
draw the sea despite the storms and darkness that 
brood between. 

In 1838 she published The Seraphim and other 
Poems ; in another year, The Romaunt of the Page, a 
volume of ballads entitled from the one which bears 
that name. In 1842 she contributed to the London 
Athenceum some Essays on the Greek-Christian and 
English Poets, — the only specimens of her prose left 



Prolonged 
illness and 
seclusion. 



" The Sera- 
phim" 
1838. 

" The Ro- 
maunt of 
the Page" 
1839. 






124 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



Critical 
prose-writ- 
ings, 1842. 



First collec- 
tive edition 
of her poems* 
1844. 



Her early 
style. 



Disadvan- 
tages of over- 
culture. 



Shelley. 



Her ballads. 



to us, — enthusiastic, not closely written, but showing 
unusual attainments and critical perception. In 1844 
— her thirty-fifth year — she found strength for the 
collection of her writings in their first complete 
edition, which opened with "A Drama of Exile." 
These volumes, comprising the bulk of her works 
during her maiden period, furnish the material and 
occasion for some remarks upon her characteristics 
as an English poet. 

Her style, from the beginning, was strikingly origi- 
nal, uneven to an extreme degree, equally remarkable 
for defects and beauties, of which the former gradually 
lessened and the latter grew more admirable as she 
advanced in years and experience. The disadvan- 
tages, no less than the advantages, of her education, 
were apparent at the outset. She could not fail to 
be affected by various master-minds, and when she 
had outgrown one influence was drawn within another, 
and so tossed about from world to world. " The 
Seraphim," a diffuse, mystical passion-play, was an 
echo of the ^Eschylean drama. Its meaning was 
scarcely clear even to the author ; the rhythm is wild 
and discordant ; neither music nor meaning is thor- 
oughly beaten out. I have mentioned Shelley as one 
with whom she was akin, — is it that Shelley, dithy- 
rambic as a votary of Cybele, was the most sexless, 
as he was the most spiritual, of poets? There are 
singers who spurn the earth, yet scarcely rise to the 
heavens ; they utter a melodious, errant strain that 
loses itself in a murmur, we know not how. Miss 
Barrett's early verse was strangely combined of this 
semi-musical delirium and obscurity, with an attempt 
at the Greek dramatic form. Her ballads, on the 
other hand, were a reflection of her English studies; 



EARLY WORKS AND STYLE. 



125 



and, as being more English and human, were a vast 
poetic advance upon '" The Seraphim." Evidently, in 
these varied experiments, she was conscious of power, 
and strove to exercise it, yet with no direct purpose, 
and half doubtful of her themes. When, therefore, 
as in certain of these lyrics, she got hold of a rare 
story or suggestion, she made an artistic poem ; all 
are stamped with her sign-manual, and one or two 
are as lovely as anything on which her fame will rest. 

My own youthful acquaintance with her works be- 
gan, for example, with the " Rhyme of the Duchess 
May." It was different from any romance-ballad I 
had read, and was to me a magic casement opening 
on " faerylands forlorn " ; and even now I think, as 
I thought then, that the sweetness and power of scen- 
ery and language, the delicious metre, the refrain of 
the passing bell, the feeling and action, are highly 
poetical and have an indescribable charm. The blem- 
ishes of this lyric are few: it is nicely adjusted to the 
proper degree of quaintness ; the overture and epi- 
logue are exquisitely done, and the tone is maintained 
throughout, — an unusual feat for Mrs. Browning. I 
have never forgotten a pleasure which so contrasted 
with the barren sentiment of a plain New England 
life, and here fulfil my obligation to lay a flower of 
gratitude upon her grave. Yes, indeed : all she 
needed was a theme to evoke her rich imaginings, 
and I wish she had more frequently ceased from in- 
trospection and composed other ballads like that of 
the "Duchess May." 

Of her minor lyrics during this period, — " IsobePs 
Child," " The Romaunt of the Page," " The Lay of 
the Brown Rosary," " The Poet's Vow," etc., — few 
are so good as the example just cited ; but each is 



"Rhyme of 
the Duchess 
May." 



Minor 
lyrics. 



126 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



Her dicti 



Lack of 
taste. 

Nobility of 
feeling. 



Grossly de- 
fective art. 



quite removed from commonplace, and, with its con- 
trasts of strength and weakness, entirely characteristic 
of its author. 

The effect of Miss Barrett's secluded life was visible 
in her diction, which was acquired from books rather 
than by intercourse with the living world ; and from 
books of all periods, so that she seemed unconscious 
that certain words were obsolete, or repellent even to 
cultured and tasteful people. Reviewers who accused 
her of affectation were partly correct ; yet many un- 
couth phrases and forgotten words seemed to her no 
less available than common forms obtained from the 
same sources. By this she gained a richer structure ; 
just as Kossuth, learning our language from books, 
had a more copious vocabulary than many English 
orators. But she lost credit for good sense, and cer- 
tainly at one time had no sure judgment in the use 
of terms. Since she explored the French, Spanish, 
and Italian classics as eagerly as those of her own 
tongue, perhaps the wonder is that her diction was 
not even more fantastical. Her taste never seemed 
quite developed, but through life subordinate to her 
excess of feeling. So noble, however, was the latter 
quality, that the critics gave her poetry their attention, 
and endeavored to correct its faults of style. For a 
time she showed a lack of the genuine artist's rever- 
ence, and not without egotism followed her wilful 
way. The difficulty with her obsolete words was that 
they were introduced unnaturally, and produced a 
grotesque effect instead of an attractive quaintness. 
Moreover, her slovenly elisions, indiscriminate mixture 
of old and new verbal inflections, eccentric rhymes, 
forced accents, wearisome repetition of favored words 
to a degree that almost implied poverty of thought, — 



SERIOUS DEFECTS AS AN ARTIST. 



127 



such matters justly were held to be an outrage upon 
the beauty and dignity of metrical art. An occa- 
sional discord has its use and charm, but harshness 
in her verse was the rule rather than the exception. 
When she had a felicitous refrain — a peculiar grace 
of her lyrics — she frequently would mar the effect 
and give a shock to her readers by the introduction 
of some whimsical or repulsive image. Her passion 
was spasmodic ; her sensuousness lacked substance ; 
as for simplicity, it was at one time questionable 
whether she was not to be classed among those who, 
with a turbulent desire for utterance, really have 
nothing definite to say. Her sonnet on " The Soul's 
Expression" showed that the only thing clear to her 
mind was that she could state nothing clearly : — 

" With stammering lips and insufficient sound 
I strive and struggle to deliver right 
That music of my nature, day and night 
With dream and thought and feeling interwound." 

Metaphysical reading aggravated her natural vague- 
ness and what is termed transcendentalism, — perilous 
qualities in the domain of art. Long afterward she 
herself spoke of " the weakness of these earlier verses, 
which no subsequent revision has succeeded in 
strengthening." 

In " A Drama of Exile," where she had a more 
definite object, these faults are less apparent, and 
her genius shines through the clouds ; so that we 
catch glimpses of the brightness which eventually 
lighted her to a station in the Valhalla of renown. 

During her years of illness she had added some 
knowledge of Hebrew to her acquirements, and could 
read the Old Testament in the original. The grander | 



Clouded 
vision. 



Cp. " Poets 
of A mer- 
ica " : pp. 
168, 169, 
249> 253. 



"A Drama 
of Exile" 

1844. 






128 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



elements of her imagination received a new stimulus 
from the sacred text, with which, after all, her mind 
was more in sympathy than with the serene beauty 
of the Greek. In the " Drama of Exile " she aimed 
at the highest, and failed ; but such failures are im- 
possible to smaller poets. It contains wonderfully 
fine passages ; is a chaotic mass, from which dazzling 
lustres break out so frequently that a critic aptly 
spoke of the " flashes " of her " wild and magnificent 
genius," the " number and close propinquity of which 
render her book one flame." My review presupposes 
the reader's familiarity with her writings, so that cita- 
tion of passages does not fall within its intention. 
Yet, let me ask what other female poet has risen to 
such language as this of Adam to Lucifer ? 



Fervent im- 
agination. 



"The prodigy 
Of thy vast brows and melancholy eyes 
Which comprehend the heights of some great fall. 
I think that thou hast one day worn a crown 
Under the eyes of God." 

And where in modern verse is there a more vigorous 
and imaginative episode than Lucifer's remembrance 
of the couched lion, " when the ended curse left silence 
in the world " ? 

" Right suddenly 
He sprang up rampant and stood straight and stiff, 
As if the new reality of death 

Were dashed against his eyes, — and roared so fierce 
(Such thick carnivorous passion in his throat 
Tearing a passage through the wrath and fear) 
And roared so wild, and smote from all the hills 
Such fast, keen echoes crumbling down the vales 
Precipitately, — that the forest beasts, 
One after one, did mutter a response 
Of savage and of sorrowful complaint 



LYRICAL EFFORTS. 



129 



Which trailed along the gorges. Then, at once, 
He fell back, and rolled crashing from the height 
Into the dusk of pines." 

Miss Barrett in this drama displayed a true concep- 
tion of the sublime ; though as yet she had neither 
grace, logic, nor sustained power. The most fragile 
and delicate of beings, she essayed, with more than 
man's audacity, to reach the infinite and soar to " the 
gates of light." 

That she was a tender woman, also, and that her 
hand had been somewhat trained by varied lyrical 
efforts, was manifest from some of those minor pieces 
through which she now began to attract the popular 
regard. Among those not previously mentioned, the 
tributes to Mrs. Hemans and Miss Landon, " Cata- 
rina to Camoens," " Crowned and Wedded," " Cow- 
per's Grave," " The Sea-Mew," " To Flush, my Dog," 
and " The Swan's Nest," were more simple and open 
to general esteem than their companion pieces. " An 
Island," "The Lost Bower," and "The House of 
Clouds " are pure efforts of fancy, for the most part 
charmingly executed. " Bertha in the Lane " is treas- 
ured by the poet's admirers for its virginal pathos, — 
the sacred revelation of a dying maiden's heart, — an 
exquisite poem, but greatly marred in the closing. It 
was difficult for the author, however fine her begin- 
nings, to end a poem, once begun, or to end it well 
under final compulsion. " The Cry of the Human," 
with its impassioned refrain and almost agonized plea 
that the ancient curse may be lightened, evinced her 
recognition of the sorrows and mysteries of existence : 
— all these things she " kept in her heart," and ut- 
tered brave invectives against black or white slavery, 
and other social wrongs. " The Cry of the Children," 
6* 1 



Successful 

lyrical 

efforts. 



Humanita- 
rian poems. 



30 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



Her most 

poptdar 

ballad. 



uneven as it is, takes its place beside Hood's " Song 
of the Shirt," for sweet pity and frowning indignation. 
In behalf of the little factory-slaves, after reading 
Home's report of his Commission, her soul took fire 
and she did what she could. If the British mill- 
owners were little likely to be impressed by her imagi- 
native ode, with its Greek motto, it certainly affected 
the minds of public writers and speakers, who could 
fashion their more practical agitation after the pat- 
tern thus given them in the Mount. 

But " Lady Geraldine's Courtship " was the ballad 
— and often a poet has one such — which gained 
her a sudden repute among lay-readers. It is 'said 
that she composed it in twelve hours, and not im- 
probably ; for, although full of melodious sentiment 
and dainty lines, the poem is marred by common- 
places of frequent occurrence. Many have classed it 
with " Locksley Hall," but, while certain stanzas are 
equal to Tennyson's best, it is far from displaying 
the completeness of that enduring lyric. I value it 
chiefly as an illustration of the greater freedom and 
elegance to which her poetic faculty had now at- 
tained, and as her first open avowal, and a brave 
one in England, of the democracy which generous 
and gifted spirits, the round world over, are wont to 
confess. As for her story, she only succeeded in 
showing how meanly a womanish fellow might act, 
when enamored of one above him in social station, 
and that the heart of a man possessed of healthy 
self-respect was something she had not yet found out. 
Her Bertram is a dreadful prig, who cries, mouths, 
and faints like a school-girl, allowing himself to eat 
the bread of the Philistines and betray his sense of 
inequality, and upon whom Lady Geraldine certainly 



A MATURE WOMAN. 



131 



throws herself away. He is a libel upon the whole 
race of poets. The romance, none the less, met with 
instant popularity on both sides of the Atlantic, and 
has passed into literature, somewhat pruned by later 
touches, as one of its author's more conspicuous 
efforts. 

Miss Barrett now, at the relatively mature age of 
thirty-five, appeared to have completed her intellect- 
ual growth. It was a chance whether her future 
should be greater than her past. Thus far I regard 
her experience as merely formative. Much of her 
vagueness and gloom had departed with the physical 
prostration that so long had borne her down. For her 
improving health showed that study and authorship, 
though against the wishes of her attendants, were the 
best medicine for a body and mind diseased. 

As the scent of the rose came back " above the 
mould," she was to emerge upon a new life, different 
from that which we hitherto have considered as the 
day is from the night. She was not to be enrolled 
among the mournful sisterhood of women, who 

"sit still 
On winter nights by solitary fires 
And hear the nations praising them far off." 

The dearest common joys were yet to be hers, and 
that full development which a woman's genius needs 
to make it rounded and complete. There is a pretty 
story of her first meeting with the poet Browning, 
based upon the lines referring to him in " Lady Ger- 
aldine's Courtship." This, however, is not credited 
by Theodore Tilton, her American editor, who wrote 
the Memorial prefixed to the collection of her "Last 
Poems." Four lyrics, thrown off at this time, — en- 



End of her 
formative 
career. 



Robert 
Browning 



" Memo- 
rial," by 
Theodore 
Tilton, 1862. 



132 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



her mar- 
riage, Lon- 
don, 1846. 



Married 
life. 



Influence o y 
love upon a 
woman's 
genius. 



titled "Life and Love," "A Denial," "Proof and 
Disproof," and "Inclusions," — go far to show Miss 
Barrett's humility, and inability to comprehend the 
happiness which had come to her. But, nevertheless, 
the poet wooed and won her; and in 1846, her 
thirty-seventh year, she was taken from her couch to 
the altar, and at once borne away by her husband 
from her native land. Some facts in my possession 
with respect to this event have too slight a bearing 
upon the record of her literary achievements to war- 
rant their insertion here. It is well known that the 
marriage was opposed by her father, but she builded 
better than he knew. Her cloister-life of maiden- 
hood in England was at an end. Fifteen happy and 
illustrious years in Italy lay before her; and in her 
case the proverb C&lum, 11011 animum, was unful- 
filled. Never was there a more complete transmuta- 
tion of the habits and sympathies of life than that 
which she . experienced beneath the blue Italian skies. 
Still, before all and above all, her refined soul re- 
mained in allegiance to the eternal Muse. 



III. 

He is but a shallow critic who neglects to take 
into his account of a woman's genius a factor repre- 
senting the master-element of Love. The chief event 
in the life of Elizabeth Barrett was her marriage, and 
causes readily suggest themselves which might deter- 
mine the most generous parent to oppose such a step 
on her part. The dedication of her edition of 1844 
shows how close was the relation existing between 
her father and herself, and I am told by one who 
knew her for many years, that Mr. Barrett "was a 



EFFECT OF LOVE UPON HER GENIUS. 



133 



man of intellect and culture, and she had been his 
pride, as well as the light of his eyes, after he be- 
came a widower." To such a parent, now well in 
the vale of years, a marriage which was to lift his 
fragile daughter from the couch to which she had 
been bound as a picture to its frame must have 
seemed a rash experiment, and a cruel blow to him- 
self, however eminent and devoted the suitor who 
had claimed her. But when the long-closed tide-ways 
of a woman's heart are opened, the torrent comes 
with double force at last, sweeping kith and kin 
away by Nature's inexorable law. If the old West 
India merchant had not afterwards acted with utter 
selfishness in respect to the marriage of another 
daughter, I should be disposed to estimate his wounded 
love for Elizabeth, as she herself did, by his stead- 
fast refusal, despite her "frequent and heart-moving" 
appeals, to be reconciled to her throughout the re- 
mainder of his darkened life. 

Wedlock was so thoroughly a new existence to her, 
that her kindred well might fear for the result. A 
veritable Lady of Shalott, she now entered the open 
highways of a peopled world. She left a polar region 
of dreams, solitude, introspection, for the equatorial 
belt of outer and real life. The beneficent sequel 
shows how wise are the instincts of a refined nature. 
To Mrs. Browning, love, marriage, travel, were happi- 
ness, desire of life, renewed bodily and spiritual 
health ; and when, in her fortieth year, the sacred 
and mysterious functions of maternity were given her 
to realize, there also came that ripe fruition of a gen- 
ius that hitherto, blooming in the night, had yielded 
fragrant and impassioned, but only sterile flowers. 

The question of an artist's married life, it seems 



Her father's 
opposition 
to the 7tup- 
tials. 



Complete 
womanhood. 



134 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. ' 



Relations of 
art and 
marriage : 



A s they af- 
fect, i, the 
husband : 



to me, has wholly different bearings when considered 
from the opposite standing-points of the two sexes. 
A discerning writer has recently mentioned an artist 
whose view was, that a man devoted to art might 
marry "either a plain, uneducated woman devoted to 
household matters, or else a woman quite capable of 
entering into his artistic life"; but no one between 
the two extremes. The former would be less perilous 
than to marry a daughter of the Philistines, " equally 
incapable of comprehending his pursuits, but much 
more likely to interfere with them." Yet in behalf 
of a man of artistic genius and sensibility, who is 
born to a career if he chooses to pursue it, I would 
not accept even the first-named alternative, unless he 
has sufficient wealth to insure him perfect indepen- 
dence or seclusion. An author's growth, and the hap- 
piness of both parties, are vastly imperilled by his 
union with the most affectionate of creatures, if she 
has an inartistic nature and a dull or commonplace 
mind. The Laureate makes the simple wife exclaim : 
"I cannot understand: I love!" — but there is no per- 
fect love without mutual comprehension ; at the best, 
a wearisome, unemotional forbearance takes its place. 
On the one part jealousy, active or disguised, of the 
other's wider range, too often exerts a restrictive in- 
fluence, by which the art-impulse, and the experiences 
it should feed upon, are modified or repressed. It 
is a law of psychological mathematics that the con- 
stant force of dulness will in the end overcome any 
varying force resisting it ; and when Pegasus can be 
driven in harness, one generally finds him yoked with 
a brood-mare, — ay, and broken-in when young and 
more or less defenceless. 

Again, we so readily persuade ourselves to lapse 



RELATIONS OF ART AND MARRIAGE. 



135 



from the efforts of creative labor, when temptation 
puts on the specious guise of duty ! The finest kind 
of art — that possessing originality — is unremunerative 
for years ; and who has the courage to pursue it, 
while responsible for the conventional ease and hap- 
piness of those who possibly regret that he is not so 
practical as other men, and look with distrust upon 
his habits of life and labor? Ordinary people can 
more easily attain to that perfect mating which is the 
sum of bliss. But let an artist marry art, and be true 
to it alone, unless by some rare chance he can find a 
companion whose soul is kindred with his own, who 
can sympathize with his tastes, and aid him with tact 
and circumstance in his social and professional career. 
If she has genius of her own, and her own purposes 
in any department of art, then all obligations can be 
entirely mutual, and under favorable auspices the high- 
est wedded felicity should be the result. 

The relations of art and marriage, where the devel- 
opment of female genius is concerned, are of a dis- 
tinctive character, and must be so considered. It is 
no doubt true that a woman, also, can only arrive at 
extreme happiness by wedlock founded upon entire 
congeniality of mind and purpose ; and yet there are 
conditions under which it may become essential to her 
complete development as am artist that she should 
marry out of her own ideal, rather than not be mar- 
ried at all. So closely inter wrought are her physical 
and spiritual existences, that otherwise the product of 
her genius may be little more than a beautiful frag- 
ment at the most. We must therefore esteem Mrs. 
Browning doubly fortunate, and protected by the gods 
themselves. For marriage not only had given her, by 
one of Nature's charming miracles, a precious lease 



A s they af- 
fect, 2, the 
wife. 



136 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



The ivedded 
poets. 



Summit 
of Mrs. 
Browning 's 
greatness. 



Her powers 
fully devel- 
oped. 



of life, but had united her with a fellow-artist whose 
disposition and pursuits were in absolute harmony 
with her own, — the one man in the world whom 
she would have chosen, yet who sought her out, and 
deemed it his highest joy to possess her as a wife, 
and cherish her as companion, lover, and friend. In 
this life of incongruities it is encouraging to find such 
an instance of the serene fitness of things. The world 
is richer for their union, than which none more dis- 
tinguished is of record in the annals of authorship. 

The ten years following the date of Mrs. Brown- 
ing's marriage were the noonday of her life, and three 
master-works, embraced in this period, represent her 
at her prime. Casa Guidi Windows appeared in 185 1, 
the same volume including the matchless " Sonnets 
from the Portuguese." Aurora Leigh' was published 
in 1856. None of her later or earlier compositions 
were equal to these in scope, method, and true poet- 
ical value. 

At first the influence of her new life was of a com- 
plex nature. It opened a sealed fountain of love 
within her, which broke forth in celestial song: it 
gave her a land and a cause to which she thoroughly 
devoted her woman's soul ; finally, a surprising ad- 
vance was evident in the rhythm, language, and all 
other constituents of har metrical work. The Saxon 
English, which she hitherto had quarried for the ba- 
sis of her verse, now became conspicuous through- 
out the whole structure. Her technical gain was 
partly due to the stronger themes which now bore up 
her wing, — and partly, I have no doubt, to the com- 
panionship of Robert Browning. Even if he did not 
directly revise her works, neither could fail to profit 
by the other's genius and experience ; and the blem- 



SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 



137 



ishes of his wife's earlier style were such as Browning 
at .this time would not relish, for they were of a dif- 
ferent kind from his own. Besides, we are sensitive 
to faults in those we love, while committing them our- 
selves as if by chartered right. 

I am disposed to consider the Sonnets from the Por- 
tuguese as, if not the finest, a portion of the finest 
subjective poetry in our literature. Their form re- 
minds us of an English prototype, and it is no sacri- 
lege to say that their music is showered from a higher 
and purer atmosphere than that of the Swan of Avon. 
We need not enter upon cold comparison of their 
respective excellences ; but Shakespeare's personal 
poems were the overflow of his impetuous youth : — his 
broader vision, that took a world within its ken, was 
absolutely objective ; while Mrs. Browning's Love Son- 
nets are the outpourings of a woman's tenderest emo- 
tions, at an epoch when her art was most mature, 
and her whole nature exalted by a passion that to 
such a being comes but once and for all. Here, in- 
deed, the singer rose to her height. Here she is ab- 
sorbed in rapturous utterance, radiant and triumphant 
with her own joy. The mists have risen and her 
sight is clear. Her mouthing and affectation are for- 
gotten, her lips cease to stammer, the lyrical spirit 
has full control. The sonnet, artificial in weaker 
hands, becomes swift with feeling, red with a " veined 
humanity," the chosen vehicle of a royal woman's 
vows. Graces, felicities, vigor, glory of speech, here 
are so crowded as to tread each upon the other's 
sceptred pall. The first sonnet, equal to any in our 
tongue, is an overture containing the motive of the 
canticle ; — " not Death, but Love " had seized her 
unaware. The growth of this happiness, her worship 



" Sonnets 
from the 
Portu- 
guese" 
1850. 



138 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



Devotion to 
Italy. 



of its bringer, her doubts of her own worthiness, are 
the theme of these poems. She is in a sweet and, 
to us, pathetic surprise at the delight which at last 
had fallen to her : — 

"The wonder was not yet quite gone 
From that still look of hers." 

Never was man or minstrel so honored as her "most 
gracious singer of high poems." In the tremor of her 
love she undervalued herself, — with all her feebleness 
of body, it was enough for any man to live within the 
atmosphere of such a soul ! In fine, the Portuguese 
Sonnets, whose title was a screen behind which the 
singer poured out her full heart, are the most exqui- 
site poetry hitherto written by a woman, and of them- 
selves justify us in pronouncing their author the great- 
est of her sex, — on the ground that the highest 
mission of a female poet is the expression of love, 
and that no other woman approaching her in genius 
has essayed the ultimate form of that expression. . An 
analogy with " In Memoriam " may be derived from 
their arrangement and their presentation of a single 
analytic theme ; but Tennyson's poem — though ex- 
hibiting equal art, more subtile reasoning and com- 
prehensive thought — is devoted to the analysis of 
philosophic Grief, while the Sonnets reveal to us that 
Love which is the most ecstatic of human emotions 
and worth all other gifts in life. 

Mrs. Browning's more than filial devotion to Italy 
has become a portion of the history of our time. In- 
dependently of her husband's enthusiasm, everything 
in the aspect and condition of the country of her 
adoption was fitted to arouse this sentiment. It be- 
came a passion with her; she identified herself with 



casa guidi windows: 



139 



the Italian cause, and for fourteen years her oratory 
in Casa Guidi was vocal with the aspiration of that 
fair land struggling to be free. Its beauty and sorrow 
enthralled her ; its poetry spoke through her voice ; 
its grateful soil finally received her ashes, and will 
treasure them for many an age to come. 

Nothing can be finer than the burst of song at the 
opening of her Italian poem, — 

" I heard last night a little child go singing, 
'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church, 
O bella liberta, O bella ! " — 

unless it be the passages which begin and close the 
second portion of the same work, composed after an 
interval of three years, when the hope of the first 
exultant outbreak was for the time obscured. Be- 
tween the two extremes the chant is eloquently sus- 
tained, and is our best example of lucid, sonorous 
English verse composed in a semi-Italian rima. While 
full of poetry, its increase of intellectual vigor shows 
how a singer may be lifted by the occasion and ca- 
pacity for pleading a noble cause. Deep voice, strong 
heart, fine brain, — the three must go together in 
the making of a great poet " Casa Guidi Windows " 
won a host of friends to Italy, and gained for its 
devoted author an historic name. During the inter- 
val mentioned she had given birth to the child whose 
presence was the awakening of a new prophetic gift : — 

" The sun strikes through the windows, up the floor ; 

Stand out in it, my own young Florentine, 
Not two years old, and let me see thee more ! 

It grows along thy amber curls to shine 
Brighter than elsewhere. Now look straight before, 

And fix thy brave blue English eyes on mine, 
And from thy soul, which fronts the future so 



" Casa 

Guidi Win- 
dows" 185 1. 



140 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



Strength, 
happiness, 
andfame. 



" A urora 

Leigh," 

1856. 



With unabashed and unabated gaze, 
Teach me to hope for what the Angels know 
When they smile clear as thou dost ! " 

While experience of motherhood now had perfected 
her woman's nature, Mrs. Browning was also at the 
zenith of her lyrical career. Her minor verses of 
the period are admirable. She revised her earlier 
poetry for the edition of 1856, and Mr. Tilton has 
pointed out some of her fastidious and usually suc- 
cessful emendations. It was the happiest portion of 
her life, as well as the most artistic. The sunshine 
of an enviable fame enwreathed her ; rare and gifted 
spirits, wandering through Italy, were attracted to her 
presence and paid homage to its laurelled charm. 
Hence, as a secondary effect of her marriage, her 
knowledge of the world increased • she became a keen 
though impulsive observer of men and women, and 
of the thought and action of her own time. Few 
social movements escaped her notice, whether in Eu- 
rope or our own unrestful land ; her instincts were 
in favor of agitation and reform, and her imagination 
was ever looking forward to the Golden Year. And 
it was now that, summoning all her strength — alas ! 
how unequal was her frail body to the tasks laid upon 
it by the aspiring soul! — with heroic determination 
and most persistent industry, she undertook and com- 
pleted her capo d'opera, — the poem which, in dedicat- 
ing to John Kenyon, she declares to be the most 
mature of her works, " and the one into which my 
highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered." 

If Mrs. Browning's vitality had failed her before 
the production of " Aurora Leigh," — a poem com- 
prising twelve thousand lines of blank-verse, — her 
generation certainly would have lost one of its repre- 



AURORA LEIGH. 



141 



sentative and original creations : representative in a 
versatile, kaleidoscopic presentment of modern life 
and issues ; original, because the most idiosyncratic 
of its author's poems. An audacious, speculative 
freedom pervades it, which smacks of the New World 
rather than the Old. Tennyson, while examining the 
social and intellectual phases of his era, maintains a 
judicial impassiveness ; Mrs. Browning, with finer 
dramatic insight, — the result of intense human sym- 
pathy, enters into the spirit of each experiment, and 
for the moment puts herself in its advocate's position. 
" Aurora Leigh " is a mirror of contemporary life, 
while its learned and beautiful illustrations make it, 
almost, a handbook of literature and the arts. As a 
poem, merely, it is a failure, if it be fair to judge 
■it by accepted standards. One may say of it, as of 
Byron's " Don Juan " (though loath to couple the two 
works in any comparison), that, although a most 
uneven production, full of ups and downs, of capri- 
cious or prosaic episodes, it nevertheless contains 
poetry as fine as its author has given us elsewhere, 
and enough spare inspiration to set up a dozen smaller 
poets. The flexible verse is noticeably her own, and 
often handled with as much spirit as freedom ■ it is 
terser than her husband's, and, although his influence 
now began to grow upon her, is not in the least ob- 
scure to any cultured reader. The plan of the work 
is a metrical concession to the fashion of a time which 
has substituted the novel for the dramatic poem. Con- 
sidered as a " novel in verse," it is a failure by lack 
of either constructive talent or experience on the 
author's part. Few great poets invent their myths ; 
few prose character-painters are successful poets ; the 
epic songsters have gone to tradition for their themes, 



A charac- 
teristic pro- 
duction. 



142 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



Landor to 
7. Forster, 
1857- 



the romantic to romance, the dramatic to history and 
incident. Mrs. Browning essayed to invent her whole 
story, and the result was an incongruous framework, 
covered with her thronging, suggestive ideas, her 
flashing poetry and metaphor, and confronting you by 
whichever gateway you enter with the instant presence 
of her very self. But either as poem or novel, how 
superior the whole, in beauty and intellectual power, 
to contemporary structures upon a similar model, 
which found favor with the admirers of parlor ro- 
mance or the lamb's-wool sentiment of orderly British 
life ! As a social treatise it is also a failure, since 
nothing definite is arrived at. Yet the poet's sense 
of existing wrongs is clear and exalted, and if her 
exposition of them is chaotic, so was the transition 
period in which she found herself involved. Upon 
the whole, I think that the chief value and interest of 
" Aurora Leigh " appertain to its marvellous illustra- 
tions of the development, from childhood on, of an 
aesthetical, imaginative nature. Nowhere in literature 
is the process of culture by means of study and pas- 
sional experience so graphically depicted. It is the 
metrical and feminine complement to Thackeray's 
" Pendennis " \ a poem that will be rightly appreci- 
ated by artists, thinkers, poets, and by them alone. 
Landor, for example, at once received it into favor, 
and also laid an unerring finger upon its weakest 
point : " I am reading a poem," he wrote, " full of 
thought and fascinating with fancy. In many pages 

there is the wild imagination of Shakespeare 

I had no idea that any one in this age was capa- 
ble of such poetry There are, indeed, even 

here, some flies upon the surface, as there always 
will be upon what is sweet and strong. I know not 



HER PERIOD OF DECLINE. 



143 



yet what the story is. Few possess the power of 
construction." 

The five remaining years of Mrs. Browning's life 
were years of self -forge tfulness and devotion to the 
heroic and true. Her beautiful character is exhibited 
in her correspondence, and in the tributes of those 
who were privileged to know her. What poetry she 
wrote is left to us, and I am compelled to look upon 
it as belonging to her period of decline. However 
fine its motive, " we are here," as M. Taine has said, 
to judge of the product alone, and " to realize, not an 
ode, but a law." Physical debility was the main cause 
of this lyrical falling off. Her exhausted frame was 
now, more than ever, what Hillard had pronounced it, 
" nearly a transparent veil for a celestial and immor- 
tal spirit." Her feelings were again more imperative 
than her mastery of art ; her hand trembled, her voice 
quavered with that emotion which is not strength. 
She now, as I have said, unconsciously began to yield 
to the prolonged influence of her husband's later style, 
and it affected her own injuriously, though it must 
be acknowledged that her poetry acquired, toward the 
last, a new and genuine, but painful, dramatic quality. 
Her " Napoleon III. in Italy," and the minor lyrics 
upon the Italian question, are submitted in evidence 
of the several points just made. Some of her later 
poems were contributed to a New York newspaper, 
with whose declared opinions she was in sympathy, 
and which was the mouthpiece of her warmest Amer- 
ican admirers ; and, in the effort to promptly meet her 
engagements, she tendered unrevised and faulty work. 
At intervals the production of some gracious, health- 
ful hour would be a truly effective poem, and such 
lyrics as " De Profundis," "A Court Lady," "The 



Mrs. 

Browning 's 
period of 
decline. 



Secondary 
influe?ice of 
her married 
life. 



"Poems be- 
fore Con- 
gress. 



86o 



" The Inde- 
pendent.'''' 



144 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



"Last 

Poems" 

1860-1861. 



Final esti- 
mate of Mrs. 
Browning 's 
genius. 



Her art. 



Tennyson 
and Mrs. 
Browning. 



Forced Recruit," " Parting Lovers," and " Mother and 
Poet," made the world realize how rich and tuneful 
could be the voice still left to her. One evening it 
was my fortune to listen to a recitation of the last- 
named poem, from the lips of a beautiful girl who 
looked the very embodiment of the lyric Muse, and I 
was struck with the truthfulness and strength displayed 
in the poet's dramatic conception of the mingled pa- 
triotism and anguish in a bereaved Italian mother's 
heart. But the dominant roughness which too gen- 
erally pervades her Last Poems shows how completely 
she now had accepted Browning's theory of entire 
subordination, in poetry, of the art to the thought, 
and his method of giving expression to the latter, no 
matter how inchoate, at any cost to the finish and 
effectiveness of the work in hand. 



IV. 

In a former chapter I wrote of " an inspired singer, 
if there ever was one, — all fire and air, — her song 
and soul alike devoted to liberty, aspiration, and love." 
The career of this gifted woman has now been traced. 
In conclusion, let us attempt to estimate her genius 
and discover the position to be assigned to her 
among contemporary poets. 

And first, with regard to her qualities as, an 
artist. She was thought to resemble Tennyson in 
some of her early pieces, but this was a mistake, if 
anything beyond form is to be considered. In read-^ 
ing" Tennyson you feel that he drives stately and 
thoroughbred horses, and has them always under 
control ; that he could reach a higher speed at pleas- 
ure ; while Mrs. Browning's chargers, half-untamed, 



FINAL ESTIMATE OF HER GENIUS. 



145 



prance or halt at their own will, and often bear her 
away over some rugged, dimly lighted tract. Her 
verse was the perfect exponent of her own nature, in- 
cluding a wide variety of topics in its range, but with 
the author's manner injected through every line of 
it. Health is not its prominent characteristic. Mrs. 
Browning's creative power was not equal to her ca- 
pacity to feel ■ otherwise there was nothing she might 
not have accomplished. She evinced over-possession, 
and certainly had the contortions of the Sibyl, though 
not lacking the inspiration. We feel that she must 
have expression, or perish, — a lack of restraint com- 
mon to female poets. She was somewhat deficient in 
aesthetic conscientiousness, and we cannot say of her 
works, as of Tennyson's, that they include nothing 
which has failed to receive the author's utmost care. 
She had that distrust of the "effect" of her produc- 
tions which betrays a clouded vision ; and in truth, 
much of her vaguer work well might be distrusted. 
Her imagination was radiant, but seldom clear; it was 
the moon obscured by mists,, yet encircled with a glo- 
rious halo. 

Her metres came by chance, and this often to her 
detriment ; she rarely had the patience to discover 
those best adapted to her needs, but gave voice to the 
first strain which occurred to her. Hence she had a 
spontaneity which is absent from the Laureate's work. 
This charming element has its drawbacks : she found 
herself hampered by difficulties which a little fore- 
thought would have avoided, and her song, though as 
fresh, was too often as purposeless, as that of a forest- 
bird. There is great music in her voice, but one 
wishes that it were better trained. She had a gift of 
melodious and effective refrains : " The Nightingales, 
7 J 



Over-posses- 
sion. 



Incertitude. 



Spontaneity. 



Her re- 
frains. 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



Cp. " Poets 
of Amer- 
ica '■ : p. 
245. 



Undue fa- 
cility. 



Lack of 
humor. 



Slight idyl- 
lic tendency. 



the Nightingales," " Margret, Margret," "You see 
we 're tired, my Heart and I," " Toll slowly ! " " The 
River floweth on," "Pan, Pan is dead!" — these and 
other examples captivate the memory, but occasion- 
ally the burden is the chief sustainer of the song. 
One of her repetends, " He giveth His beloved Sleep," 
is the motive of an almost celestial lyric, faultless in 
holy and melodious design. It is a poem to read by 
the weary couch of some loved one passing away, 
and doubtless in many a heart is already associated 
with memories that "lie too deep for tears." 

Her spontaneous and exhaustless command of words 
gave her a large and free style, but likewise a danger- 
ous facility, and it was only in rare instances, like the 
one just cited, that she attained to the strength and 
sweetness of repose. Her intense earnestness spared 
her no leisure for humor, a feature curiously absent 
from her writings : she almost lacked the sense of the 
ludicrous, as may be deduced from some of her two- 
word rhymes, and from various absurdities solemnly 
indulged in. But of wit and satire she has more 
than enough, and lashes all kinds of tyranny and 
hypocrisy with supernal scorn. It is perhaps due 
to her years of indoor life that the influence of land- 
scape-scenery is not more visible in her poetry. Her 
girlhood, nevertheless, was partly spent in Hereford- 
shire, among the Malvern Hills, and we find in "Au- 
rora Leigh," and in some of her minor pieces, not 
only reminiscences of that region, but other landscape, 
both English and Italian, executed in a broad and 
admirable manner. But when she follows the idyllic 
method, making the tone of the background enhance 
the feeling of a poem, she uses by preference the 
works of man rather than those of Nature : architect- 



THE MOST BELOVED OF POETS. 



147 



ure, furniture, pictures, books above all, rather than 
water, sky, and forest. Men and women were the 
chief objects of her regard, — her genius was more 
dramatic than idyllic, and lyric first of all. 

The instinct of worship and the religion of human- 
ity were pervading constituents of Mrs. Browning's 
nature, and demand no less attention than the love 
which dictated her most fervent poems. A spiritual 
trinity, of zeal, love, and worship, presided over her 
work. If in her outcry against wrong she had noth- 
ing decisive to suggest, she at least sounded a clarion 
note for the incitement of her comrades and succes- 
sors, and this was her mission as a reformer. Re- 
ligious exaltation breathes through every page of her 
compositions. Her eulogist aptly called her the Blaise 
Pascal of women, and said that her books were prayer- 
books. She had a profound faith in Christian revela- 
tion, interpreted in its most catholic sense. Her 
broad humanity and religion, her defence of her sex, 
her subtile and tender knowledge of the hearts of 
children, her abnegation, hope, and faith, seemed the 
apotheosis of womanhood and drew to her the affec- 
tion of readers in distant lands. She was the most 
beloved of minstrels and women. Jean Paul said of 
Herder that he was less a poet than a poem, but in 
Mrs. Browning the two were blended : she wrote her- 
self into her works, and I have closely reviewed her 
experience, because it is inseparable from her lyrical 
career. The English love to call her Shakespeare's 
Daughter, and in truth she bears to their greatest 
poet the relation of Miranda to Prospero. Her deli- 
cate genius was purely feminine and subjective, attri- 
butes that are made to go together. Most introspective 
poetry, in spite of Sidney's injunction, wearies us, 



Her sympa- 
thetic and 
religious 
nature. 



Cp. " Poets 
of Amer- 
ica " .' pp. 
123-128. 



The most 
beloved of 
poets. 



Subjective 
quality of 
her genius. 



148 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



Cp. " Poets 
of Amer- 
ica " ; p. 
146. 



Her repre- 
sentative 
position. 



Belief in 
inspiration. 

Cp. " Poets 
of A mer- 
ica " .* p. 
129. 



Her exalta- 
tion and 
rapture. 



because it so often is the petty or morbid sentiment 
of natures little superior to our own. Men have more 
conceit, with less tact, than women, and, as a rule, 
when male poets write objectively they are on the 
safer side. But when an impassioned woman, yearn- 
ing to let the world share her poetic rapture or grief, 
reveals the secrets of her burning heart, generations 
adore her, literature is enriched, and grosser beings 
have glimpses of a purity with which we invest our 
conceptions of disenthralled spirits in some ideal 
sphere. 

( I therefore regard Mrs. Browning as the representa- 
tive of her sex in the Victorian era^nd a luminous 
example of the fact that " woman is not undeveloped 
man, but diverse " ; as the passion-flower of the cen- 
tury ; the conscious medium of some power beyond 
the veil. For, if she was wanting in reverence for 
the form and body of the poet's art, she more than 
all her tuneful brethren revered the poet's inspiration. 
To her poets were 

" the only truth-tellers now left to God ; 
The only speakers of essential truth, 
Opposed to relative, comparative, 
And temporal truths ; the only holders by 
His sun-skirts." 

And this in a period when technical refinement has 
caused the mass of verse-makers to forget that art 
is vital chiefly as a means of expression. Like her 
Hebrew poets, she was obedient " to the heavenly 
vision," and I think that the form of her religion, 
which was in sympathy with the teachings of Emanuel 
Swedenborg, enables us clearly to understand her 
genius and works. I have no doubt that she surren- 
dered herself to the play of her imagination, as if 



DEATH OF THE SIBYL. 



149 



some angelic voice were speaking through her, — and 
of what other modern poet can this be said ? With 
equal powers of expression, such a faith exalts the 
bard to an apocalyptic prophet, — to the consecrated 
interpreter, of whom Plato said in " Ion," " A poet 
is a thing light, with wings, and unable to compose 
poetry until he becomes inspired and is out of his 
sober senses, and his imagination is no longer under 
his control ; for he does not compose by art, but 
through a divine power." 

At the close of the first summer month of 186 1, a 
memorable year for Italy, the land of song was free, 
united, once more a queen among the nations ; but 
the voice of its sweetest singer was hushed, the golden 
harp was broken ; the sibylline minstrel lay dying in 
the City of Flowers. She was at the last, as ever, 
the enraptured seer of celestial visions. Some efflux 
of imperishable glory passed before her eyes, and she 
said that it was beautiful. It seemed, to those around 
her, as if she died beholding 

" in jasper-stone as clear as glass, 
The first foundations of that new, near Day 
Which should be builded out of Heaven to God." 



Died in 
Florence, 
June 29, 
1861. 



CHAPTER V. 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



Alfred 
Tennyson, 
P oct-L au- 
reate : born 
at Somerby, 
Lincoln- 
shire, Aug. 
5, 1809. 



Law of 

change in 
public taste. 

Cp. "Poets 
of Amer- 
ica " .' pp. 
39, 273. 



A case in 
point. 



I. 

THAT a new king should arise " over Egypt, which 
knew not Joseph," was but the natural order 
of events. The wonder is that nothing less than the 
death of one Pharaoh, and the succession of another, 
could oust a favorite from his position. Statesman 
or author, that public man is fortunate who does not 
find himself subjected to the neglectful caprices of his 
own generation, after some time be past and the dura- 
tion of his influence unusually prolonged. There is 
a law founded in our dread of monotony, in that 
weariness of soul which we call ennui, — the spiritual 
counterpart of a loathing which even the manna that 
fell from heaven at last bred in the Israelites : a law 
that affects, as surely as death, statesmen, moralists, 
heroes, — and equally the renowned artist or poet. 
The law is Nature's own, and man's perception of it 
is the true apology for each fashion as it flies. But 
Nature, with all her changes, is secure in certain 
noble, recurrent types ; and so there are elevated 
modes xA art, to which we sometimes not unwillingly 
bid farewell, knowing that after a time they will re- 
turn, and be welcome again and forever. 

At present we have only to observe the working of 
this law with respect to the acknowledged leader, by 



LAW OF CHANGE IN PUBLIC TASTE. 



151 



influence and laurelled rank, of the Victorian poetic 
hierarchy. He, too, has verified in his recent experi- 
ence the statement that, as admired poets advance in 
years, the people and the critics begin to mistrust the 
quality of their genius, are disposed to revise the laud- 
atory judgments formerly pronounced upon them, and, 
finally, to claim that they have been overrated, and are 
not men of high reach. Such is the result of that long 
familiarity whereby a singer's audience becomes some- 
what weary of his notes, and it is exaggerated in 
direct ratio with the potency of the influence against 
which a revolt is made. In fact, the grander the 
success the more trying the reaction. It is what the 
ancients meant by the envy of the gods, unto which 
too fortunate men were greatly subjected. Alternate 
periods of favor and rejection not only follow one 
another in cycles, by generations, or by centuries 
even; but the individual artist, during a long career, 
will find himself tested by minor perturbations of the 
same kind, varying with his successive achievements, 
and the varying conditions of atmosphere and time. 

The influence of Alfred Tennyson has been almost 
unprecedentedly dominant, fascinating, extended, yet of 
late has somewhat vexed the public mind. Its repose- 
ful charm has given it a more secure hold upon our 
affections than is usual in this era, whose changes 
are the more incessant because so much more is 
crowded into a few years than of old. Even of this 
serene beauty we are wearied ; a murmur arises ; re- 
bellion has broken out ; the Laureate is irreverently 
criticised, suspected, no longer worshipped as a demi- 
god. Either because he is not a demi-god, or that 
through long security he has lost the power to take 
the buffets and rewards of fortune "with equa] 



Recent 
strictures. 



152 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



The 



Fla 



Office of the 
critic. 



thanks," he does not move entirely contented within 
the shadow that for the hour has crossed his tri- 
umphal path. A little poem, "The Flower," is the 
expression of a genuine grievance : his plant, at first 
novel and despised, grew into a superb flower of art, 
was everywhere glorious and accepted, yet now is 
again pronounced a weed because the seed is com- 
mon, and men weary of a beauty too familiar. The 
petulance of these stanzas reveals a less edifying mat- 
ter, to wit, the failure of their author in submission 
to the inevitable, the lack of a philosophy which he 
is not slow to recommend to his fellows. If he verily 
hears "the roll of the ages," as he has declared in 
his answer to " A Spiteful Letter," why then so rest- 
ive ? Why not recognize, even in his own case, the 
benignity of a law which, as Cicero said of death, 
must be a blessing because it is universal? He him- 
self has taught us, in the wisest language of our time, 

that 

" God fulfils himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 

No change, no progress. Better to decline, if need 
be, upon some inferior grade, that all methods may 
be tested. Ultimately, disgust of the false will bring 
a reaction to something as good as the best which 
has been known before. 

Last of all, the world's true and enduring verdict. 
In calmer moments the Laureate must needs reflect 
that a future age will look back, measure him as he 
is, and compare his works with those of his contem- 
poraries. To forestall, as far as may be, this stead- 
fast judgment of posterity, is the aim and service of 
the critic. Let us separate ourselves from the adu- 
lation and envy of the moment, and search for" the 



HE REPRESENTS HIS PERIOD. 



153 



true relation of Tennyson to his era, — estimating his 
poetry, not by our appetite for it, but by its inherent 
quality, and its lasting value in the progress of British 
song. 

There have been few comprehensive reviews of 
Tennyson's poetical career. The artistic excellence 
of his work has been, from the first, so distinguished 
that lay critics are often at a loss how to estimate 
this poet. We have had admirable homilies upon 
the spirit of his teachings, the scope ahd nature of 
his imagination, his idyllic quality,' — his landscape, 
characters, language, Anglicanism, — but nothing ade- 
quately setting forth his technical superiority. I am 
aware that professional criticism is apt to be unduly 
technical ; to neglect the soul, in its concern for the 
body, of art. My present effort is to consider both ; 
nevertheless, with relation to Tennyson, above all 
other modern poets, how little can be embraced within 
the limits of an essay ! The specialist-reviewer has 
the advantage of being thorough as far as he goes. 
All I can hope is to leave no important point un- 
touched, though my reference to it may be restricted 
to a single phrase. 



II. 

It seems to me that the only just estimate of Ten- 
nyson's position is that which declares him to be, 
by eminence, the representative poet of the recent 
era. Not, like one or another of his compeers, repre- 
sentative of the melody, wisdom, passion, or other 
partial phase of the era, but of the time itself, with its 
diverse elements in harmonious conjunction. Years 

have strengthened my belief that a future age will 
7 * 



Dual nature 
of art. 



Tennyson 
represents 
his era. 



154 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



E. A . Foe's 
essay on 
" The Poetic 
Principle." 



bearing 

is as 



regard him, independently of his merits, as 
this relation to his period. In his verse he 
truly " the glass of fashion and the mould of form " 
of the Victorian generation in the nineteenth century 
as Spenser was of the Elizabethan court, Milton of 
the Protectorate, Pope of the reign of Queen Anne. 
During his supremacy there have been few great 
leaders, at the head of different schools, such as be- 
longed to the time of Byron, Wordsworth, and Keats. 
His poetry has gathered all the elements which find 
vital expression in the complex modern art. 

Has the influence of Tennyson made the recent 
British school, or has his genius itself been modified 
and guided by the period ? It is the old question of 
the river and the valley. The two have taken shape 
together ; yet the beauty of Tennyson's verse was so 
potent from the first, and has so increased in potency, 
that we must pronounce him an independent genius, 
certainly more than the mere creature of his sur- 
roundings. 

Years ago, when he was yet comparatively unknown, 
an American poet, himself finely gifted with the lyrical 
ear, was so impressed by Tennyson's method, that, 
" in perfect sincerity," he pronounced him " the noblest 
poet that ever lived." If he had said " the noblest 
artist," and confined this judgment to lyrists of the 
English tongue, he possibly would have made no 
exaggeration. Yet there have been artists with a less 
conscious manner and a broader style. The Laureate 
is always aware of what he is doing ; he is his own 
daimon, — the inspirer and controller of his own 
utterances. He sings by note no less than by ear, 
and follows a score of his own inditing. But, ac- 
knowledging his culture, we have no right to assume 



A BORN ARTIST. 



155 



that his ear is not as fine as that of any poet who 
gives voice with more careless rapture. His aver- 
age is higher than that of other English masters, 
though there may be scarcely one who in special 
flights has not excelled him. By Spencer's law of 
progress, founded on the distribution of values, his 
poetry is more eminent than most which has pre- 
ceded it. 

I have inferred that the very success of Tennyson's 
art has made it common in our eyes, and rendered 
us incapable of fairly judging it When a poet has 
length of days, and sees his language a familiar por- 
tion of men's thoughts, he no longer can attract that 
romantic interest with which the world regards a 
genius freshly brought to hearing. Men forget that 
he, too, was once new, unhackneyed, appetizing. But 
recall the youth of Tennyson, and see how complete 
the revolution with which he has, at least, been coeval, 
and how distinct his music then seemed from every- 
thing^wjiich had gone before. 

/He began as a metrical artist, pure and simple, 
and with a feeling perfectly unique, — at a long re- 
move, even, from that of so absolute an artist as was 
John Keats. He had very little notion beyond the 
production of rhythm, melody, color, and other poetic 
effects. Instinct led him to construct his machinery 
before essaying to build. Many have discerned, in 
his youthful pieces, the influence of Wordsworth and 
Keats, but no less that of the Italian poets, and <6i 
the early English balladists. I shall hereafter revert 
to " Oriana," " Mariana," and " The Lady of Shalott," 
as work that in its kind is fully up to the best of 
those Pre-Raphaelites who, by some arrest of devel- 
opment, stop precisely where Tennyson made his 



Hindrances 
to correct 
apprecia- 
tion. 



A born 
artist. 



The Pre- 
Raphaelites. 



1 56 



ALFRED TENNYSON 



His early 
study of 
details. 



Poetry chief 
of the fine 
arts. 



second step forward, and censure him for having gone 
beyond them. 

Meaningless as are the opening melodies of his col- 
lected verse, how delicious they once seemed, as a 
change from even the greatest productions which then 
held the public ear. Here was something of a new 
kind ! The charm was legitimate. Tennyson's im- 
mediate predecessors were so fully occupied with the 
mass of a composition that they slighted details : 
what beauty they displayed was not of the parts, but 
of the whole. Now, in all arts, the natural advance 
is from detail to general effect. How seldom those 
who begin with a broad treatment, which apes ma- 
turity, acquire subsequently the minor graces that 
alone can finish the perfect work ! By comparison 
of the late and early writings of great English poets, 
— Shakespeare and Milton, — one observes the pro- 
cess of healthful growth. Tennyson proved his kin- 
dred genius by this instinctive study of details in his 
immature verses. In marked contrast to his fellows, 
and to every predecessor but Keats, — " that strong, 
excepted soul," — he seemed to perceive from the 
outset, that Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine arts : 
the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach 
true excellence; that it has its technical secrets, its 
mysterious lowly paths that reach to aerial outlooks, 
and this no less than sculpture, painting, music, 
or architecture, but even more. He devoted himself, 
with the eager spirit of youth, to mastering this ex- 
quisite art, and wreaked his thoughts upon expres- 
sion, for the expression's sake. And what else should 
one attempt, with small experiences, little concern 
for the real world, and less observation of it? He 
had dreams rather than thoughts \ but was at the 



A TRANSITION PERIOD. 



157 



most sensitive period of life with regard to rhythm, 
color, and form. In youth feeling is indeed " deeper 
than all thought," and responds divinely to every 
sensuous confrontment with the presence of beauty. 

It is difficult now to realize how chaotic was the 
notion of art among English verse-makers at the be- 
ginning of Tennyson's career. Not even the example 
of Keats had taught the needful lesson, and I look 
upon his successor's early efforts as of no small 
importance. These were dreamy experiments in metre 
and word-painting, and spontaneous after their kind. 
Readers sought not to analyze their meaning and 
grace. The significance of art has since become so 
well understood, and such results have been attained, 
that " Claribel," " Lilian," " The Merman," " The Dy- 
ing Swan," " The Owl," etc., seem slight enough to 
us now ; and even then the affectation pervading 
them, which was merely the error of a poetic soul 
groping for its true form of expression, repelled men 
of severe and established tastes; but to the neophyte 
they had the charm of sighing winds and babbling 
waters, a wonder of luxury and weirdness, inexpres- 
sible, not to be effaced. How we lay on the grass, in 
June, and softly read them from the white page ! 
To this day what lyrics better hold their own than 
" Mariana " and the " Recollections of the Arabian 
Nights." In these pieces, however, as in the crude 
yet picturesque " Ode to Memory," the poet exhibited 
some distinctness of theme and motive, and, in a 
word, seemed to feel that he had something to ex- 
press, if it were but the arabesque shadows of his 
fancy-laden dreams. Of a mass of lyrics, sonnets, 
and other metrical essays, published theretofore, — 
some contained in the Poems by Two Brotheis, and 



A transition- 
period, 
1820- 1830. 



Charm of 
Tennyson's 
early lyrics. 



"Poems, 
chiefly 
Lyrical, 
1830. 



Poems by 
Two Broth- 
ers,' 1 '' 1827. 



'58 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



" Poems ," 
1832-33./ 



Sudden and 
delightful 
poetic 
growth. 



A n expres- 
sion of the 
beautiful. 



others in the original volume of 1830, — I say noth- 
ing, for they show little of the purpose that charac- 
terizes the few early pieces which our poet himself 
retains in his collected works. One of them, " Hero 
and Leander," is too good in its way to be discarded 3 
the greater number are juvenile, often imitative, and 
the excellent judgment of Tennyson is shown by his 
rejection of all that have no true position in his 
}frical rise and progress. 

The volume of 1832, which began with "The Lady 
of Shalott," and contained " Eleanore," " Margaret," 
" The Miller's Daughter," " The Palace of Art," " The 
May Queen," " Fatima," "The Lotos-Eaters," and 
" A Dream of Fair Women," was published in his 
twenty-second year. All in all, a more original and 
beautiful volume of minor poetry never was added 
to our literature. The Tennysonian manner here was 
clearly developed, largely pruned of mannerisms. 
The command of delicious metres ; the rhythmic su- 
surrus of stanzas whose every word is as needful and 
studied as the flower or scroll of ornamental archi- 
tecture, — yet so much an interlaced portion of the 
whole, that the special device is forgotten in the 
general excellence ; the effect of color, of that music 
which is a passion in itself, of the scenic pictures 
which are the counterparts of changeful emotions ; 
all are here, and the poet's work is the epitome of 
every mode in art. Even if these lyrics and idyls had 
expressed nothing, they were of priceless value as 
guides to the renaissance of beauty. Thenceforward 
slovenly work was impossible, subject to instant re- 
buke by contrast. The force of metrical elegance 
made its way and carried everything before it. From 
this day Tennyson confessedly took his place at the 



THE VOLUME OF 1832. 



159 



h d of what some attempt to classify as the art- 
scl ool : that is, of poets who largely produce their 
effect by harmonizing scenery and detail with the 
emotions or impassioned action of their verse. 

The tendency of his genius was revealed in this 
volume. The author plainly was a college-man, a 
student of many literatures, and, though an English-* 
man to the core, alive to suggestions from Italian 
and Grecian sources. His Gothic feeling was mani- 
fest in "The Lady of Shalott " and "The Sisters"; 
his classicism in " CEnone " ; his idyllic method, es- 
pecially, now defined itself, making the scenery of a 
poem enhance the central idea, — thought and land- 
scape being so blended that it was difficult to deter- 
mine which suggested the other. 

I shall elsewhere examine with some care the rela- 
tions between Tennyson and Theocritus, and the gen- 
eral likeness of the Victorian to the Alexandrian 
period, and at present need not enter upon this spe- 
cial ground. Enough to say that the Greek influence 
is visible in many portions of the volume of 1832, 
sometimes through almost literal translations of clas- 
sical passages. " CEnone," modelled upon the new- 
Doric verse, ranks with " Lycidas " as an Hellenic 
study. While this most chaste and beautiful poem 
fascinated every reader, the wisest criticism found 
more of genuine worth in the purely English quality 
of those limpid pieces in which the melody of the 
lyric is wedded to the sentiment and picture of the 
idyl, — "The Miller's Daughter," "The May Queen,"" 
and "Lady Clara Vere de Vere." More dewy, fresh, 
pathetic, native verse had not been written since the 
era of "As You Like It" and "A Winter's Tale." 
During ten years this book accomplished its auspi- 



The ^art- 
school.'''' 



Tendency 
of the poef s 
genius. 



See Chapter 
VI. 



Classicism. 



Purely Eng 
lish idyls. 



i6o 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



u Poems f 
1842.' 



A treasury 
of represent- 
ative poems. 



Blank-verse. 



Previous 
styles. 



cious work, until the author's fame and influence had 
so extended that he was encouraged to print the vol- 
ume of 1842, wherein he first gave the name of idyls 
to poems of the class that has brought him a distinc- 
tive reputation. 

At the present day, were this volume to be lost, 
we possibly should be deprived of a larger specific 
variety of Tennyson's most admired poems than is 
contained in any other of his successive ventures. It 
is an assortment of representative poems. To an art 
more restrained and natural we here find wedded a 
living soul. The poet has convictions : he is not a 
pupil, but a master, and reaches intellectual greatness. 
His verses still bewitch youths and artists by their 
sentiments and beauty, but their thought takes hold of 
thinkers and men of the world. He has learned not 
only that art, when followed for its own sake, is al- 
luring, but that, when used as a means of expressing 
what cannot otherwise be quite revealed, it becomes 
seraphic. We could spare, rather than this collection, 
much which he has since given us : possibly " ^Laud," 
— without doubt, idyls like "The Golden Supper" and 
"Aylmer's Field." Look at the material structure of 
the poetry. Here, at last, we observe the ripening 
of that blank-verse which had been suggested in the 
" CEnone." Consider Tennyson's handling of this 
measure, — the domino of a poetaster, the state gar- 
ment of a lofty poet. It must be owned that he now 
enriched it by a style entirely his own, and as well- 
defined as those already established. Foremost of 
the latter was the Elizabethan, marked by freedom 
and power, and never excelled for dramatic compo- 
sition.- Next, the Miltonic or Anglo-Epic, with its 
sonorous grandeur and stately Roman syntax, of which 



THE VOLUME OF 1842. 



I6l 



■adise Lost" is the masterpiece, and "Hyperion" 
the finest specimen in modern times. That it really 
has no place^in our usage is proved by the fact that 
Keats, with true insight, refused, after some experi- 
ence, to complete " Hyperion," on the ground that 
it had too many " Miltonic inversions." Meanwhile 
blank-verse had been used for less imaginative or less 
heroical work; notably, for didactic and moralizing 
essays, by Cowper, Wordsworth, and other leaders of 
the contemplative school. 

Tennyson's is of two kinds, one of which is suited 
to the heroic episodes in his idyllic poetry, — the first 
important example being the " Morte J/Arthur," which 
opened the volume of 1842, and is now made a por- 
tion of the " Idyls of JJie^King." I hold the verse of 
that poem to be his own invention, derived from the 
study of Homer and his natural mastery of the Saxon 
element in our language. Milton's Latinism is so 
pronounced as to be un-English • on the other hand, 
there is such affinity between the simple strength of 
the Homeric Greek and that of the English in which 
Saxon words prevail, that the former can be rendered 
into the latter with great effect. Tennyson recognizes 
this in his prelude to " Morte d' Arthur," deprecating 
his heroics as "faint Homeric echoes, nothing-worth." 
But almost with the perusal of the first two lines, 

" So all day long the noise of battle roll'd 
Among the mountains by the winter sea," 

we see that this style surpasses other blank-verse in 
strength and condensation. It soon became the 
model for a score of younger aspirants ; in short, 
impressed itself upon the artistic mind as a new and 
vigorous form of our grandest English measure. 

K 



Cp. " Poets 
of Amer- 
ica'''' : pp. 
79> 8 7> 374= 



Originality 
and perfeo 
Hon of Ten- 
nyson's 
blank-verse. 

" Morte 
d ' Arthur. ^ 



Homeric 
and Saxon 
qualities. 



1 62 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



The Victo- 
rian idyllic 
verse. 



Crabbe. 



''Dora.'' 



<: Godiva." 

" The Gar- 
dener's 

Daughter." 



"Ulysses." 



Comprehen- 
sive ra7ige 
of "English 
Idyls and 
Other 
Poems." 



" The Talk- 
ing Oak." 



The other style of Tennyson's blank-verse is found 
in his purely idyllic pieces, — "The Gardener's Laugh- 
ter," "Dora," " G &diva ." and, upon a lower plane, 
such eclogues as "Audley Court" and "Edwin Mor- 
ris." " St. Simeon Stylites " and " Ulysses " have each 
a special manner. In the first-named group, the poet 
brought to completeness the Victorian idyllic verse. 
The three are models from which he could not ad- 
vance : in surpassing beauty and naturalness une- 
qualled, I say, by many of his later efforts. What 
Crabbe essayed in a homely fashion, now, at the 
touch of a finer artist, became the perfection of rural, 
idyllic tenderness. " Dora " is like a Hebrew pasto- 
ral, the paragon of its kind, with not a quotable de- 
tail, a line too much or too little, but faultless as a 
whole. Who can read it without tears ? " Godiva " 
and "The Gardener's Daughter" demand no less 
praise for descriptive felicity of another kind. But, 
for virile grandeur and astonishingly compact expres- 
sion, there is no blank-verse poem, equally restricted 
as to length, that approaches the " UJysses " : concep- 
tion, imagery, and thought are royally imaginative, 
and the assured hand is Tennyson's throughout. 

I reserve for later discussion the poet's general 
characteristics, fairly displayed in this volume. The 
great feature is its comprehensive range; it includes 
a finished specimen of every kind of poetry within 
the author's power to essay. The variety is surpris- 
ing, and the novelty was no less so at the date of 
its appearance. Here is "The Talking Oak," that 
marvel of grace and fancy, the nonpareil of sustained 
lyrics in quatrain verse ; as exquisite in filigree-work 
as "The Rape of the Lock," with an airy beauty and 
rippling flow, compared with which the motion of 



NGLISH IDYLS AND OTHER POEMS: 



163 



Pope's couplets is that of partners in an eighteenth- 
uijp minuet. Here is the modern lover reciting 
ksley_JTall," which, despite its sentimental ego- 
tism and consolation of the heart by the head, has 
fine metrical quality, is fixed in literature, and fur- 
nishes genuine illustrations of the poet's time. In 
" The Two Voices " and " The Vision of Sin " the 
excess of his speculative intellect makes itself felt : 
but the second of these seems to me a strained and 
fantastic production ; for which very reason, perchance, 
it drew the attention of semi -metaphysical persons 
who have no perception of the true mission of poetry, 
and, by a certain affectation, mistaken for subtilty, 
has excited more comment and analysis than it de- 
serves. " The Day-Dream," like " The Talking Oak," 
gives the poet an opportunity for dying falls, melliflu- 
ous cadences, and delicately fanciful pictures. The 
story is made to his hand ; he rarely invents a story, 
though often, as in the last-named poem, chancing 
upon the conceit of a dainty and original theme. 
Here, too, are "Lady Clare," "The Lord of Bur- 
leigh," and "Edward Gray," each a simple, crystal- 
line, and flawless ballad. Nor has Tennyson ever 
composed, in his minor key, more enduring and sug- 
gestive little songs than " Break, break, break ! " and 
" Flow down, cold Rivulet, to the Sea ! " both, also, in 
this volume.Af His humor, which seldom becomes him, 
is at its best in that half-pensive, half-rollicking, 
wholly poetic composition, dear to wits and dreamers, 
" Will Waterproof 's Lyrical Monologue." /in this col- 
lection, too, we find his early experiments in the now 
famous measure of "In Memoriam."\ Purest and 
highest of all the lyrical pieces are " St. Agnes " and 
" Sir Galahad," full of white light, and each a stain- 



" Locksley 
Hall." 



" The Two 
Voices." 

" T/ie Vision 
of Sin." 



" The Day- 
Dream." 



Ballads. 



Songs. 



TJte " Lyr- 
ical Mono- 



"St. 

Agnes " and 
"Sir Gala- 
had." 



/ 



164 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



A composite 
and influen- 
tial volume. 



Climacterics 
in art. 



" The 

Princess : 
Medley,'" 
1847. 



A romantic 
Composition. 



less idealization of its theme. " Sir Galahad " must 
be recited by a clarion voice, ere one can fully appre- 
ciate the sounding melody, the knightly, heroic ring. 
The poet has never chanted a more ennobling strain. 

Such is the excellence, and such the unusual range 
of a volume in which every department of poetry, 
except the dramatic, is exhibited in great perfection, 
if not at the most imaginative height. To the au- 
thor's students it is a favorite among his books, as 
the one that fairly represents his composite genius. 
It powerfully affected the rising group of poets, giv- 
ing their work a tendency which established its gen- 
eral character for the ensuing thirty years. 

There comes a time in the life of every aspiring 
artist, when, if he be a painter, he tires of painting 
cabinet-pictures, — however much they satisfy his ad- 
mirers ; if a poet, he says to himself : " Enough of 
lyrics and idyls ; let me essay a masterpiece, a sus- 
tained production, that shall bear to my former work 
the relation which an opera or oratorio bears to a 
composer's sonatas and canzonets." It may be that 
some feeling of this kind impelled Tennyson to write, 
TJi£_^Exime$s, the theme and stoiy of which are both] 
his own invention. At that time he had not learned/ 
the truth of Emerson's maxim that " Tradition sup- 
plies a better fable than any invention can " ; and 
that it is as well for a poet to borrow from history 
or romance a tale made ready to his hands, and 
which his genius must transfigure. The poem is, as 
he entitled it, " A Medley," constructed of ancient 
and modern materials, — a show of mediaeval pomp 
and movement, observed through an atmosphere of " 
latter-day thought and emotion ; so varying, withal, 
in the scenes and language of its successive parts, 



'THE princess: 



165 



that one may well conceive it to be told by the group 
of thoroughbred men and maidens who, one after 
another, rehearse its cantos to beguile a festive sum- 
mer's day. /I do not sympathize with the criticisms 
to which it has been subjected upon this score, and 
which is but the old outcry of the French classicists 
against Victor Hugo and the romance school.) The 
poet, in his prelude, anticipates every stricture, and 
to me the anachronisms and impossibilities of the 
story seem not only lawful, but attractive. Like those 
of Shakespeare's comedies, they invite the reader 
off-hand to a purely ideal world ; he seats himself 
upon an English lawn, as upon a Persian enchanted 
carpet, — hears the mystic word pronounced, and, 
presto ! finds himself in fairy-land. Moreover, Ten- 
nyson's special gift of reducing incongruous details 
to a common structure and tone is fully illustrated 
in a poem made 

"to suit with Time and place, 
A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house, 
A talk of college and of ladies' rights, 
A feudal knight in silken masquerade. 

This were a medley ! we should have him back 
Who told the * Winter's Tale ' to do it for us." 

But not often has a lovelier story been recited. After 
the idyllic introduction, the body of the poem is 
composed in a semi-heroic verse. Other works of our 
poet are- greater, but none is so fascinating as this 
romantic tale : English throughout, yet combining the 
England of Cceur de Leon with that of Victoria in 
one bewitching picture. Some of the author's most 
delicately musical lines — " jewels five words long " 



The Prel- 
ude. 



i66 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



Epic swift-^ 
ness of 
movement. 

Cp. "Poets 
of A wier- 
ica " ; /. 
83. 



A notable 
group of 
lyrics. 



V 



Isometric 
songs. 






— are herein contained, and the ending of each canto 
is an effective piece of art. 

The tournament scene, at the close* of the fifth 
book, is the most vehement and rapid passage to be 
found in the whole range of Tennyson's poetry. By 
an approach to the Homeric swiftness, it presents a 
contrast to the laborious and faulty movement of 
much of his narrative verse. The songs, added in 
the second edition of this poem, reach the high-water 
mark of lyrical composition. Few will deny that, 
taken together, the five melodies : " As through the 
land," " Sweet and low," " The splendor falls on 
castle walls," " Home they brought her warrior dead," 
and " Ask me no more ! " — that these constitute the 
finest group of songs produced in our century ; and 
the third, known as the " Bugle Song," seems to many 
the most perfect English lyric since the time of Shake- 
speare^/ln " T he Princes s " we also find Tennyson's 
most successful studies upon the model of the The- 
ocritan isometric verse. He was the first to enrich 
our poetry with this class of melodies, for the bur- 
lesque pastorals of the eighteenth century need not 
be considered. Not one of the blank-verse songs in 
his Arthurian epic equals in structure or feeling the 
" Tears, idle tears," and " O swallow, swallow, flying, 
flying south ! " Again, what witchery of landscape 
and action ; what fair women and brave men, who, 
if they be somewhat stagy and traditional, at least 
are more sharply defined than the actors in our poet's 
other romances ! Besides, " The Princess " has a dis- 
tinct purpose, — the illustration of woman's struggles, 
aspirations, and proper sphere ; and the conclusion 
is one wherewith the instincts of cultured people are 
so thoroughly in accord, that some are used to an- 



HIS INTELLECTUAL GROWTH. 



167 



swer, when asked to present their view of the " wo- 
man question," " You will find it at the close of 
' The Princess.' " Those who disagree with Tenny- 
son's ^presentation acknowledge that if it be not true 
it is well told. His Ida is, in truth, a beautiful and 
heroic figure : — 

" She bow'd as if to veil a noble tear. 

Not peace she looked, the Head : but rising up 
Robed in the long night of her deep hair, so 
To the open window moved. 

She stretched her arms and call'd 
Across the tumult and the tumult fell." 

Of the author's shortcomings in this and other poems 
we have to speak hereafter. I leave " The Princess," 
deeming it the most varied and interesting of his 
works with respect to freshness and invention. Alt 
mankind love a story-teller such as Tennyson, by this 
creation, proved himself to be. 

In the youth of poets it is the material value of 
their work that makes it precious, and for certain 
gifts of language and color we esteem one more 
highly than another. When a sweet singer dies pre- 
maturely, we lament his loss ; but in a poet's later 
years character and intellect begin to tell. His other 
gifts being equal, he who has the more vigorous mind 
will draw ahead of his fellows, *and take the front 
position. Tennyson, like Browning and Arnold, has 
that which Keats was bereft of, and which Wordsworth, 
Landor, and Procter possessed in full measure, — the 
gift of years, and must be judged according to his 
fortune. In mental ability he comes near to the 
greatest of the five, and in synthetic grasp surpasses 
them all. Arnold's thought is wholly included in 



Woman's 
Rights. 



Tennyson 's 
intellectual 
growth and 
advantage. 



1 68 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



The prime 
of life. 



"In Memo- 
riam," 1850. 



His most 
unique and 
distinctive 
production. 



Elegiac 
master- 
pieces. 



This poem, 
the greatest 
0/ them all. 



Tennyson ; if you miss Browning's psychology, you 
find a more varied analysis, qualified by wise restraint. 
His intellectual growth has steadily progressed, and 
is reflected in the nature of his successive poems. 

At the age of forty a man, blessed with a sound 
mind in a sound body, should reach the maturity of 
his intellectual power. At such a period Tennyson 
produce^/^n^Mdma^iam, his most characteristic and 
significant work : not so ambitious as his epic of 
King Arthur, but more distinctively a poem of this 
century, and displaying the author's genius in a sub- 
jective form. In it are concentrated his wisest re- 
flections upon life, death, and immortality, the worlds 
within and without, while the whole song is so largely 
uttered, and so pervaded with the singer's manner, 
that any isolated line is recognized at once. This 
work stands by itself : none can essay another upon 
its model, without yielding every claim to personality 
and at the risk of an inferiority that would be ap- 
palling. The strength of Tennyson's intellect has full 
sweep in this elegiac poem, — the great threnody of 
our language, by virtue of unique conception and 
power. /^ Lycidas," with its primrose beauty and 
varied lofty flights, is but the extension of a theme 
set by Moschus and Bion. Shelley, in " Adonais," 
despite his spiritual ecstasy and splendor of lament, 
followed the same masters, — yes, and took his land- 
scape and imagery from distant climes. Swinburne's 
dirge for Baudelaire is a wonder of melody ; nor do 
we forget the " Thyrsis " of Arnold, and other modern 
ventures in a direction where the sweet and absolute 
solemnity of the Saxon tongue is most apparent. 
Still, as an original and intellectual production, " In 
Memoriam " is beyond them all : and a more impor- 



in memoriam: 



169 



tant, though possibly no more enduring, creation of 
rhythmic art. 

The metrical form of this work deserves attentiorr. 
The author's choice of the transposed-quatrain verse 
was a piece of good fortune. Its h ymnal qual ity. 
finely exemplified in the opening prayer, is always 
impressive, and, although a monotone, no more mo- 
notonous than the sounds of nature, — the murmur 
of ocean, the soughing of the mountain pines. Were 
" In Memoriam " written in direct quatrains, I think 
the effect would grow to be unendurable. The work 
as a whole is built up of successive. lyrics, each ex- 
pressing a single phase of the poet's sorrow-brooding 
thought ; and here again is followed the method of 
nature, which evolves cell after cell, and, joining each 
to each, constructs the sentient organization. But 
Tennyson's art-instincts are always perfect ; he does 
the fitting thing, and rarely seeks through eccentric 
and curious movements to attract the popular regard. 

As to scenery, imagery, and general treatment, " In 
Memoriam " is eminently a British poem. The grave, 
majestic, hymnal measure swells like the peal of an 
organ, yet acts as a brake on undue spasmodic out- 
bursts of discordant grief. A steady, yet varying 
marche funebre ; a sense of passion held in check, of 
reserved elegiac power. For the strain is everywhere 
calm, even in rehearsing a bygone violence of emo- 
tion, along its passage from woe to desolation, and 
anon, by tranquil stages, to reverence, thought, aspira- 
tion, endurance, hope. On sea and shore the ele- 
ments are calm ; even the wild winds and snows of 
winter are brought in hand, and made subservient, as 
the bells ring out the dying year, to the new birth of 
Nature and the sure purpose of eternal God. 
8 l 



Its metrical 
and stanzaic 
arrange- 
ment. 



A thorough- 
ly national 
poem. 



Rhythmic 
grandeur 
and solem- 
nity. 



170 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



Incorrect 
estimates. 



Faith a?id 
doubt. 



Poetic use 
of scientific 
material. 



Critical objections are urged against "In Memo- 
riam " ; mostly, in my opinion, such as more fitly 
apply to poems upon a lower grade. It is said to 
present a confusion of religion and skepticism, an 
attempt to reconcile faith and knowledge, to blend 
the feeling of Dante with that of Lucretius ; but, if 
this be so, the author only follows the example of 
his generation, and the more faithfully gives voice to 
its spiritual questionings. Even here he is accused 
of " idealizing the thoughts of his contemporaries " ; 
to which we rejoin, in the words of another, "that 
great writers do not anticipate the thought of their 
age ; they but anticipate its expression." His scien- 
tific language and imagery are censured also, but do 
not his efforts in this direction, tentative as they are, 
constitute a merit? Failing, as others have failed, to 
reconcile poetry and metaphysics, he succeeds better 
in speculations inspired by the revelations of lens 
and laboratory. Why should not such facts be taken 
into account? The phenomenal stage of art is pass- 
ing away, and all things, even poetic diction and 
metaphor, must endure a change. It is absurd to 
think that a man like Tennyson will rest content with 
ignoring or misstating what has become every-day 
knowledge. The spiritual domain is still the poet's 
own ; but let his illustrations be derived from living 
truths, rather than from the worn and ancient fables 
of the pastoral age. A certain writer declares that 
Tennyson shows sound sense instead of imaginative 
power. Not only sense, methinks, but "the sanity 
of true genius " ; and the Strephon-and-Chloe singers 
must change their tune, or be left without a hearing. 
A charge requiring more serious consideration is that 
the sorrow of " In Memoriam " is but food for thought, 



in memoriam: 



171 



a passion of the head, not of the heart. The poet, 
however, has reached a philosophical zenith of his 
life, far above ignoble weakness, and performs the 
office which an enfranchised spirit might well require 
of him ; building a mausoleum of immortal verse, — 
conceiving his friend as no longer dead, but as hav- 
ing solved the mysteries they so often have discussed 
together. If there is didacticism in the poem, it is a 
teaching which leads ad astra, by a path strictly within 
the province of an elegiac minstrel's song. 

For the rest, "In Memoriam" is a serene and 
truthful panorama of refined experiences ; filled with 
pictures of gentle, scholastic life, and of English 
scenery through all the changes of a rolling year ; 
expressing, moreover, the thoughts engendered by 
these changes. When too sombre, it is lightened by 
sweet reminiscences ; when too light, recalled to grief 
by stanzas that have the deep solemnity of a passing, 
bell. Among its author's productions it is the one 
most valued by educated and professional readers. 
Recently, a number of authors having been asked 
to name three leading poems of this century which 
they would most prefer to have written, each gave 
" In Memoriam " either the first or second place 
upon his list. Obviously it is not a work to read 
at a sitting, nor to take up in every mood, but one 
in which we are sure to find something of worth in 
every stanza. It contains more notable sayings than 
any other of Tennyson's poems. The wisdom, yearn- 
ings, and aspirations of a noble mind are here; curi- 
ous reasoning, for once, is not out of place ; the poet's 
imagination, shut in upon itself, strives to irradiate 
with inward light the mystic problems of life. At 
the close, Nature's eternal miracle is made symbolic 



Wisdom 
spiritualized 
by grief. 



neral 
quality of 
this noble 
poem.. 



Admired by 
■men of let- 
ters. 



172 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



Poet -Laure- 
ate of Eng- 
land, Nov. 
21, 1850. 



The Wel- 
lington Ode. 



Forced qual- 
ity of his 
occasional 
pieces. 



of the soul's palingenesis, and the tender and beau- 
tiful marriage-lay tranquillizes the reader with the 
thought of the dear common joys which are the heri- 
tage of every living kind. 



III. 

In the year 1850 Tennyson received the laurel, 
and almost immediately was called upon by the 
national sentiment to exercise the functions of his 
poetic office. The "Ode on the Death of the Duke 
of Wellington " was the first, and remains the most 
ambitious, of his patriotic lyrics. This tribute to the 
" last great Englishman " may fairly be pronounced 
equal to the occasion ; a respectable performance for 
Tennyson, a strong one for another poet. None but 
a great artist could have written it, yet it scarcely 
is a great poem, and certainly, though Tennyson's 
most important ode, is not comparable with his pred- 
ecessor's lofty discourse upon the "Intimations of 
Immortality." Several passages have become folk- 
words, such as " O good gray head which all men 
knew ! " and 

" This is England's greatest son, — 
He that gain'd a hundred fights, 
Nor ever lost an English gun ! " 

but the ode, upon the whole, is labored, built up of 
high-sounding lines and refrains after the manner 
of Dryden, in which rhetoric often is substituted for 
imagination and richness of thought. 

The Laureate never has been at ease in handling 
events of the day. To his brooding and essentially 
poetic nature such matters seem of no more moment, 
beside the mysteries of eternal beauty and truth, 



MALI' ND OTHER POEMS? 



173 



than was the noise of catapults and armed men to 
Archimedes studying out problems during the t city's 
siege. If he succeeds at all with them, it is by 
sheer will and workmanship. Even then his voice 
is hollow, and his didacticism, as in " Maud," arti- 
ficial and insincere. The laurel, and the fame which 
now had come to him, seemed for a time to bring 
him more in sympathy with his countrymen, and he 
made an honest endeavor to rehearse their achieve- 
ments in his song. The result, seen in the volume 
Maud, and Other Poems, illustrates what I say. Here 
are contained his prominent occasional pieces, "The 
Charge of the Light Brigade," the Wellington ode, 
and the metrical romance from which the volume 
takes its name. After several revisions, the Balak- 
lavan lyric has passed into literature, but ranks 
below the nobler measures of Drayton and Campbe 
" Maud," however, with its strength and weakness, 
has divided public opinion more than any other of 
the author's works. I think that his judicious 
students will not demur to my opinion that it is 
quite below his other sustained productions ; rather, 
that it is not sustained at all, but, while replete 
with beauties, weak and uneven as a whole, — and 
that this is due to the poet's having gone outside 
his own nature, and to his surrender of the joy of 
art, in an effort to produce something that should 
at once catch the favor of the multitude. " Maud " 
is scanty in theme, thin in treatment, poor in 
thought ; but has musical episodes, with much fine 
scenery and diction. It is a greater medley than 
" The _Pri ncess," shifting from vague speculations to 
passionate outbreaks, and glorying in one famous 
and beautiful nocturne, — but all intermixed with 



The volume 
e/1855. 



1L.-^1 



"Maud." 



174 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



Lyric and 

idyllic 

verse. 



cheap satire, and conspicuous for affectations un- 
worthy of the poet. The pity of it was that this 
production appeared when Tennyson suddenly had 
become fashionable, in England and America, through 
his accession to the laureate's honors, and for this 
reason, as well as for its theme and eccentric qual- 
ities, had a wider reading than his previous works : 
not only among the masses, to whom the other vol- 
umes had been sealed books, but among thoughtful 
people, who now first made the poet's acquaintance 
and received " Maud " as the foremost example of 
his style. First impressions are lasting, and to this 
day Tennyson is deemed, by many of the latter 
class, an apostle of tinsel and affectation. In our 
own country especially, his popular reputation began 
with " Maud," — a work which, for lack of construc- 
tive beauty, is the opposite of his other narrative 
poems. 

A pleasing feature of the volume of 1855 was an 
idyl, "The Brook," which is charmingly finished and 
contains a swift and rippling inter-lyric delightful to 
every reader. A winsome, novel stanzaic form, possi- 
bly of the Laureate's own invention, is to be found 
in " T h ^_I}ajsy/' ^an d in the Horatian lines to his 
friend Maurice. Here, too, is much of that felicitous 
word-painting for which he is deservedly renowned : — 

" O Milan, O the chanting quires, 
The giant windows' blazon'd fires, 

The height, the space, the gloom, the glory ! 
A mount of marble, a hundred spires ! 

" How faintly-flush'd, how phantom-fair, 
Was Monte Rosa, hanging there 

A thousand shadowy-pencill'd valleys 
And snowy dells in a golden air." 



c 



IDYLS OF THE KING. 



175 



We come at last to Tennyson's master-work, so 
recently brought to a completion after the labor of 
twenty years, — during which period the separate 
Idyls of the King had appeared from time to time. 
Nave and transept, aisle after aisle, the Gothic min- 
ster has extended, until, with the addition of a cloister 
here and a chapel yonder, the structure stands com- 
plete. I hardly think that the poet at first expected 
to compose an epic. It has grown insensibly, under 
the hands of one man who has given it the best 
years of his life, — but somewhat as Wolf conceived 
the Homeric poems to have grown, chant by chant, 
until the time came for the whole to be welded to- 
gether in heroic form. Yet in other great epics the 
action rarely ceases, the links are connected, and the 
movement continues from day to day until the end. 
Here, we have a series of idyls, — like the tapestry- 
work illustrations of a romance, scene after scene, with 
much change of actors and emotions, yet all leading 
to one solemn and tragic close. It is the epic of 
chivalry, — the Christian ideal of chivalry which we\ 
have deduced from a barbaric source, — our concep- 
tion of what knighthood should be, rather than what 
it really was ; but so skilfully wrought of high imag- 
inings, faery spells, fantastic legends, and mediaeval 
splendors, that the whole work, suffused with the 
Tennysonian glamour of golden mist, seems like a 
chronicle illuminated by saintly hands, and often 
blazes with light like that which flashed from the 
holy wizard's book when the covers were unclasped. 
And, indeed, if this be not the greatest narrative- 
poem since " Paradise Lost," what other English 
production are you to name in its place ? Never 
so lofty as the grander portions of Milton's epic, 



" Idyls of 
the King, 
1859-72. 



A 71 epic of 
ideal chiv- 
alry. 



176 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



Malory's 
" Le Morte 
Darthur" 
1485. 



Tennyson a 
Pre-Raph- 
aelite in 



youth. 



His love of 
allegory. 



it is more evenly sustained and has no long prosaic 
passages ; while " Paradise Lost " is justly declared 
to be a work of superhuman genius impoverished by 
dreary wastes of theology. 

Tennyson early struck a vein in the black-letter 
compilation of Sir Thomas Malory. A tale was 
already fashioned to his use, from which to derive 
his legends and exalt them with whatsoever spiritual 
meanings they might require. The picturesque qual- 
ities of the old Anglo-Breton romance fascinated his 
youth, and found lyrical expression in the weird, 
melodious, Pre-Raphaelite ballad of " The Lady of 
Shalott." The young poet here attained great ex- 
cellence in a walk which Rossetti and his pupils 
have since chosen for their own, and his early 
studies are on a level with some of their master- 
pieces. Until recently, they have made success in 
this direction a special aim, while Tennyson would 
not be restricted even to such attractive work, but 
went steadily on, claiming the entire field of im- 
aginative research as the poet's own. 
/ His strong allegorical bent, evinced in that early 
lyric, was heightened by analysis of the Arthurian 
legends. The English caught this tendency, long 
since, from the Italians ; the Elizabethan era was 
so charged with it, that the courtiers of the Virgin 
Queen hardly could speak without a mystical double- 
meaning, — for an illustration of which read the 
dialogue in certain portions of Kingsley's " Amyas 
Leigh." From Sidney and Spenser down to plain John 
Bunyan, and even to Sir Walter Scott, allegory is a 
natural English mode ; and, while adopted in several 
of Tennyson's pieces, it finds a special development 
in the "Idyls of the King." 



IDYLS OF THE KING: 



177 



The name thus bestowed upon the early instal- 
ments of this production seems less adapted to its 
complete form. Like the walls of Troy, it 

" Rose slowly to a music slowly breathed, 
A cloud that gathered shape." 

The shape no longer is idyllic, and doubt no longer 
exists whether a successful epic can be written in a 
mature period of national literature. We have one 
here, but subdivided into ten distinct poems, each 
of which suits the canonical requirement, and may 
be read at a single sitting. 

To my mind, there is a marked difference in style 
between the original and later portions of this work. 
The "Morte d'Arthur " of 1842 is Homeric to the 
farthest degree possible in the slow, Saxon move- 
ment of the verse ; grander, with its " hollow oes 
and aes," than any succeeding canto, always except- 
ing " Guinevere." Nor do I think the later idyls 
equal to those four which first were issued in one 
volume, and which so cleared the Laureate's fame 
from the doubts suggested by " Maud, and Other 
Poems." "Vivien" is a bold and subtle analysis, 
a closer study of certain human types than Tenny- 
son is wont to make. " Elaine " still remains, for 
pathetic sweetness and absolute beauty of narrative 
and rhythm, dearest to the heart of maiden, youth, 
or sage. " Enid," while upon the lower level of 
" Pelleas and Ettarre " and " Gareth and Lynette," 
is clear and strong, and shows a freedom from 
mannerism characteristic of the author's best period. 
It would seem that his creative vigor reached its 
height during the composition of these four idyls ; 
certainly, since the production of "Enoch Arden," 
8* L 



Distinction 
between the 
early and 
later blank- 
verse. 



Vivien. ' 



Elaifie, 



"Enid." 

" Pelleas 
and Et- 
tarre. " 



1 78 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



" Guine- I 
vere" thej 
Laureate s 
v tost dra- 
matic a. id 
imaginative 
work, f 



" The Pass- 
ing of Ar- 
thur.'''' 



at an early subsequent date, he has nc 
freshness and imagination. His greate 
still is that noblest of modern episO' 
entitled "Guinevere," surcharged with trag 



:ed in 
ement 

canto 
c pathos 

and high dramatic power. He never has so reached 
the passio vc?-a of the early dramatists as in this im- 
posing scene. There is nothing finer in modern verse 
than the interview between Arthur and his remorseful 
wife; nothing loftier than the passage beginning — 

" Lo ! I forgive thee, as Eternal God 
Forgives : do thou for thine own soul the rest. 
But how to take last leave of all I loved ? 

golden hair, with which I used to play- 
Not knowing ! O imperial-moulded form, 
And beauty such as never woman wore, 
Until it came a kingdom's curse with thee — 

1 cannot touch thy lips, they are not mine, 

But Lancelot's : nay, they never were the King's." 

When this idyl first appeared, what elevation seized 
upon the soul of every poetic aspirant as he read 
it ! What despair of rivalling a passion so imagina- 
tive, an art so majestic and supreme ! 

I have referred to the Homeric manner of the 
fragment now made the conclusion of the epic, and 
entitled " The Passing of Arthur." The magnificent 
battle-piece, by which it is here preluded, is so dif- 
ferent in manner from the original " Morte d' Arthur," 
that both are injured by their juxtaposition. The 
canto, moreover, plainly weakens at the close. The 
epic properly ends with the line, 

" And on the mere the wailing died away." 
The poet's sense of proportion here works injuri- 



'IDYLS OF THE KING: 



179 



ously, -urging him to bring out fully the moral of his 
allegory, albeit the effect really is harmed by this 
addition of the sequel, down to the line which 
finishes the work : — 

" And the new sun rose bringing the new year." 

In conclusion, observe the technical features of 
" Gareth ana Lynette," a canto recently added to 
the poem. It displays Tennyson's latest, not his 
best manner, carried to an extreme ; the verse is 
clamped together, with every conjunction omitted 
that can be . spared, yet interspersed with lines of 
a galloping, redundant nature, as if the Laureate 
were somewhat influenced by Swinburne and adapt- 
ing himself to a fashion of the time. A special 
fault is the substitution of alliteration for the simple 

cellence of his standard verse. This may be a 
concession to the modern school, or a result of his 
n.ousing among Pre-Chaucerian ballads. It palls on 
the ear, as does the poet's excessive reiteration and 
play upon words. We are compensated for all this 
by a stalwart presentation of that fine old English 
which Emerson has pronounced " a stern and dread-j 
ful language." The public is indebted to Tennyson 
for a restoration of precious Saxon words, too. long 
forgotten, which, we trust, will hereafter maintain 
their ground. He is a purifier of our tongue : a 
resistant to the novelties of slang and affectation 
intruded upon our literature by the mixture of races 
and the extension of English-speaking colonies to 
every clime and continent in the world. 

It is not probable that another sustained poem 
will hereafter be written upon the Arthurian legends. 
Milton's dream inconsonant with his own time and, 



" Garetk 
and Ly- 
nette.'''' 



Recent man* 
nerisms. 



Tennyson's 
English. 



i8o 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



Resolute 
andfortu- 
nate ad- 
vance in 
work and 
fame. 



higher aspirations, has, at last, its due fulfilment. 
The subject waited long, a sleeping beauty, until 
the " fated fairy-prince " came, woke it into life, 
and the spell is forever at an end. But who shall 
say whether future generations will rate this epic 
as highly as we do ; whether it will stand out like 
" The Faery Queene " and " Paradise Lo,-t," as one 
of the epochal compositions b^ r which ^in age is 
symbolized? More than one j :m, or series of 
poems, — Drayton's "The Barom Wars," for in- 
stance, — has wrongly in its own time been thought 
a work of this class, though now men say of it that 
only the shadow of its name remains. At pr it 
we have no right to declare of the "Idyls of the 
King," as of " In Memoriam," that it is so original, 
so representative both of the author and of his 
period, as to defy the dust of time. 

A famous life often falls short of its promise. 
Temperament and circumstance hedge it with ob- 
stacles ; or, perhaps, the " Fury with the abhorred 
shears " slits its thin-spun tissue before the decisive 
hour. In the case of Tennyson this has been re- 
versed. He has advanced by regular stages to the 
highest office of a poet. More fortunate than Lan- 
dor, he was suited to the time, and the time to his 
genius ; he has been happier than Keats or Shelley 
in length of years, and, in ease of circumstances, 
than Wordsworth, Coleridge, or Hood. Had he 
died after completing the epic, his work would still 
seem rounded and complete. Surely a poet's youth 
ful dream never was more fully realized, and we 
must regard the Laureate's genius as developed 
through good fortune to the utmost degree per 
.mitted by inherent limitations. 



enoch arden: 



ISI 



During the growth of this epic he has, however, \ 
produced a few other poems which take high rank. 
Of these, Enoch^jcdm^ in sustained beauty, bears 
a relation to his shorter pastorals similar to that 
existing between the epic and his minor heroic-verse. 
Coming within the average range of emotions, it 
has been very widely read. This poem is in its 
author's purest idyllic style ; noticeable for evenness 
of tone, clearness of diction, successful description 
of coast and ocean, — finally, for the loveliness and 
fidelity of its genre scenes. In study of a class 
below him, hearts "centred in the sphere of com- 
mon duties," the Laureate is unsurpassed. A far 
different creation is " Lucretius," a brooding charac- 
ter with which Tennyson is quite in sympathy. He 
has invested it with a certain restless grandeur, yet 
hardly, I should conceive, wrought out the work he 
thought possible when the theme was first suggested 
to his mind. He found its limits and contented 
himself with portraying a gloomy, isolated figure, 
as strongly and subtly as Browning would have 
drawn it, and with a terseness beyond the latter's 
art. 

I have already spoken of " The Golden Supper " 
and "Aylmer's Field." Among other and better 
pieces, " Sea-Dreams," — a ■ poem of measureless 
satire and much idyllic beauty, — "Tithonus," "The 
Voyage," — a fine lyric, and such masterly ballads 
as "The Victor," "The Captor," and "The Sailor- 
Boy," will not be forgotten. It is worth while to 
observe the few dialect poems which Tennyson has 
written, — thrown off, as if merely to show that he 
could be easily first in a field which he resigns to 
others. The " Northern Farmer " ballads, old and 



|" Enoch 
\Arden, and 
)pther 
Poems," 



"Lucre- 
tius." 



Miscellane- 
ous pieces. 



Dialect 
poems, etc. 



1 82 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



Character- 
istics of 
Tennyson's 
genius. 



Synthetic 
perfection. 



Lack of 
spirit and 
quality. 



new, are the best English dialect studies of our 
time. Among his minor diversions are light oc- 
casional pieces and some experiments in classical 
measures, — often finished sketches, germs of works 
to which he has given no further attention. He 
saw that " Boadicea " offered no such field as that 
afforded by the Arthurian legends, and wisely gave 
it over. Again, he unquestionably could have made 
a great blank-\«erse translation of Homer, but chose 
the better part in devoting his middle life solely 
to creative work. The world can ill afford to lose 
a poet's golden prime in the labors of a translator. 

IV. 

In whatsoever light we examine the characteristics 
of the Laureate's genius, the complete and even 
balance of his poetry is from first to last con- 
spicuous. It exhibits that just combination of lyrical 
elements which makes a symphony, wherein it is 
difficult to say what quality predominates. Review- 
ing minor poets, we think this one attractive for 
the wild flavor of his unstudied verse ; another, for 
the gush and music of his songs ; a third, for idyllic 
sweetness or tragic power ; but in Tennyson we 
have the strong repose of art, whereof — as of the 
perfection of nature — the world is slow to tire. 
It has become conventional, but remember that 
nothing endures to the point of conventionalism 
which is not based upon lasting rules ; that it once 
was new and refreshing, and is sure, in future days, 
to regain the early charm. 

/ The one thing longed for, and most frequently 
missed, in work' of this kind, is the very wilding 



ANALYSIS OF HIS GENIUS. 



183 



flavor of which I speak. We are not always broad 
enough and elevated enough to be content with 
symphonic art. Guinevere wearies of Arthur. There 
are times when a tart apple, a crust of bread, a bit 
of wild honey, are worth more to us than all the 
delicacies of the larder. We wish more rugged 
outbreaks, more impetuous discords ; we listen for 
the sudden irregular trill of the thicket songster. 
The fulness of Tennyson's art evades the charm 
of spontaneity. How rarely he takes you by sur- 



prise ! His stream is sweet, assured, stron| 



but 



how seldom the abrupt bend, the plunge of the 
cataract, the thunder and the spray ! Doubtless he 
has enthusiasms, but all are held in hand ; college- 
life, study, restraint, comfort, reverence, have done 
their work upon him. He is well broken, as we 
say of a thoroughbred, — proud and true, and, 
though he makes few bursts of speed, keeps easily 
forward, and is sure to be first at the stand. 

We come back to the avowal that in technical 
excellence, as an artist in verse, Alfred Tennyson 
is the greatest of modern poets. Other masters, 
old or new, have surpassed him in special instances ; 
but he is the one who rarely nods, and who always 
finishes his verse to the extreme. Not that he is 
free from weaknesses : to the present day, when 
pushed for inspiration, he resorts to inventions as 
disagreeable as the affectation which repelled many 
healthy minds from his youthful lyrics. Faults of 
this sort, in " Maud!l -and later poems, have somewhat 
prejudiced another class of readers, — people who, 
with what a critic denominates their " eighteenth 
century" taste, still pay homage to the genius of 
Pope for merits which the Laureate has in even 



A great and 
conscientious 
artist. 



1 84 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



Points of 
resemblance 
between 
Tennyson 
and Pope. 



greater excess. A question recently has been 
mooted, whether Milton, were he living in our time, 
could write " Paradise Lost " ? A no less interesting 
conjecture would relate to the kind of poetry that 
we should have from Pope, were he of Tennyson's 
generation. The physical traits of the two men 
being so utterly at variance, no doubt many will 
scout my suggestion that the verse of the former 
might closely resemble that of the latter. Pope 
excelled in qualities which, mutatis mutandis, are 
noticeable in Tennyson : finish and minuteness of 
detail, and the elevation of common things to fanci- 
ful beauty. Here, again, compare " The Rape of 
the Lock " with " The Sleeping Beauty," and espe- 
cially with "The Talking Oak." A faculty of "say- 
ing things," which, in Pope (his being a cruder age, 
when persons needed that homely wisdom which 
seems trite enough in our day), became didacticism, 
in Tennyson is sweetly natural and poetic. Since 
the period of the " F^ay_ on_ Man. " from what writer 
can you cull so many wise and fine proverbial 
phrases as from the poet who says : — 

" 'T is better to have loved and lost, 
Than never to have loved at all " ; 

"Kind hearts are more than coronets, 

And simple faith than Norman blood " ; 

" There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds " ; 

who puts the theory of evolution in a couplet when 

he sings of 

" one far-off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves"; 



TENNYSON AND POPE. 



I8 5 



who so tersely avows that 

" Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers " ; 

" Things seen are mightier than things heard " ; 
and, again : — 

" Old age hath yet his honor and his toil " ; 

from whom else so many of these proverbs, which are 
not isolated, but, as in Pope's works, recur by tens 
and scores ? Curious felicities of verse : — 

" Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere " ; 

lines which record the most exquisite thrills of life : — 

" Our spirits rush'd together at the touching of the lips " ; 

and unforgotten similes : — 

"Dear as remembered kisses after death" ; — 

such beauties as these occur in multitudes, and lit- 
erally make up the body of the Laureate's song. In 
feeling, imagination, largeness of heart and head, the 
diminutive satirist can enter into no comparison with 
our poet, but the situation is otherwise as respects 
finish and moralistic power. The essence of Pope's 
art was false, because it was the product of a false 
age; Dryden had been his guide to the stilted hero- 
ics of the French school, which so long afterwards, 
Pope lending them such authority, stalked through 
English verse. In this day he would, like Tennyson, 
have found his masters among the early, natural 
poets, or obtained, in a direct manner, what classi- 
cism he needed, and not through Gallic filters. Yet 
it is not long since I heard an eminent man laud- 
ing Pope for the very characteristics which, as here 



Points of 
difference, 
subjective 
and objec- 
tive. 



1 86 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



Supreme 
and complex 
modern art. 



shown, are conspicuous in Tennyson ; and decrying 
the latter, misled by that chance acquaintance with 
his poetry which is worse than no acquaintance at 
all. In suggestiveness Pope was singularly deficient: 
his constructive faculty so prevailed, that he left 
nothing to the reader's fancy, but explained to the 
end. He had no such moods as those evoked by 
" Tears, idle tears," and " Break, break, break ! " and 
therefore his verses never suggest them. In irony 
Tennyson would equal Pope, had he not risen above 
it. The man who wrote " The New Timon and the 
Poets," and afterwards rebuked himself for so doing, 
could write another " Dunciad," or, without resort to 
any models, a still more polished and bitter satire of 
his own. 

Tennyson's original and fastidious art is of itself a 
theme for an essay. The poet who studies it may 
well despair ; he never can excel it, and is tempted 
to a reactionary carelessness, trusting to make his 
individuality felt thereby. Its strength is that of per- 
fection ; its weakness, the over-perfection which marks 
a still-life painter. Here is the absolute sway of 
metre, compelling every rhyme and measure needful 
to the thought; here are sinuous alliterations, unique 
and varying breaks and pauses, winged flights and 
falls, the glory of sound and color, everywhere pres- 
ent, or, if missing, absent of the poet's free will. Art 
so complex was not possible until centuries of litera- 
ture had passed, and an artist could overlook the 
field, essay each style, and evolve a metrical result, 
which should be to that of earlier periods what the 
music of Meyerbeer and- Rossini is to the narrower 
range of Piccini or Gluck. In Tennyson's artistic 
conscientiousness, he is the opposite of that com- 



HIS DESCRIPTIVE POWER. 



l8 7 



peer who approaches him most nearly in years and 
strength of intellect, Robert Browning. His gift of 
language is not so copious as Swinburne's, yet through 
its use the higher- excellence is attained. But I shall 
elsewhere write of these matters. Let me conclude 
my remarks upon the Laureate's art with a reference 
to his unfailing taste and sense of the fitness of things. 
This is neatly exemplified in the openings, and espe- 
cially in the endings, of his idyls. "Audley Court" 
very well illustrates what I mean. Observe, also, the 
beautiful dedication of his collected works to the 
Queen, and the solemn and faithful character-painting 
of the tribute to Prince Albert which forms the prelude 
to the Idyls of the King. The two dedications are 
equal to the best ever written, and each is a poem 
by itself. They fully sustained the wisdom of Victo- 
ria's choice of a successor to 

" This laurel greener from the brows 
Of him that uttered nothing base," 

Leaving the architecture of Tennyson's poetry and 
coming to the sentiment which it seeks to express, 
we are struck at once by the fact that an idyllic, 
or picturesque mode of conveying that sentiment is 
the one natural to this poet, if not the only one 
permitted by his limitations. In this he surpasses all 
the poets since Theocritus; and his work is greater 
than the Syracusan's, because his thought and period 
are greater. His eyes are his purveyors ; with " wis- 
dom at one entrance quite shut out" he would be 
helpless. To use the lingo of the phrenologists, his 
locality is better than his individuality. He does not, 
like Browning, catch the secret of a master-passion, 
nor, like the old dramatists, the very life of action; 



Browning. 
Swinburne. 



Taste. 



The Laure- 
ate an idyl- 
list. 



188 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



His descrip- 
tive/acuity. 



Limitations. 



on the contrary, he gives us an ideal picture of an 
ideal person, but set against a background more 
tangible than other artists can draw, — making the 
accessories, and even the atmosphere, convey the 
meaning of his poem. As we study his verse, and 
the sound and color of it enter our souls, we think 
with him, we partake of his feeling, and are led to 
regions which he finds himself unable to open for 
us except in this suggestive way. The fidelity of his 
accessories is peculiar to the time : realistic, without 
the Flemish homeliness ; true as Pre-Raphaelitism, 
but mellowed . with the atmosphere of a riper art. 
This idyllic method is not that of the most inspired 
poets and the most impassioned periods. But, merely 
as a descriptive writer, who is so delightful as Ten- 
nyson? He has the unerring first touch, which in a 
single line proves the artist; and it justly has been 
remarked that there is more true English landscape 
in many an isolated stanza of "In Memoriam" than 
in the whole of " The Seasons," — that vaunted de- 
scriptive poem of a former century. A paper has 
been written upon the Lincolnshire scenery depicted 
in his poems, and we might have others, just as well, 
upon his marine or highland views. He is a born 
observer of physical nature, and, whenever he applies 
an adjective to some object, or passingly alludes to 
some phenomenon which others have not not&l, is 
almost infallibly correct. Possibly he does this too 
methodically, but his opponents cannot deny that his 
outdoor rambles are guided by their eloquent apostle's 
"Lamp of Truth." 

His limitations are nearly as conspicuous as his 
abundant gifts. They are indicated, first, by a style 
pronounced to the degree of mannerism, and, sec- 



HIS LIMITATIONS. 



189 



ondly, by failure, until within a very recent date, to 
produce dramatic work of the genuine kind. 

With respect to his style, it may be said that 
Tennyson — while objective in the variety of his 
themes, and in ability to separate his own experi- 
ence from their development — is the most sub- 
jective of poets in the distinguishable flavor of his 
language and rhythm. Reading him you might not 
guess his life and story, — the reverse of which is 
true with Byron, whom I take as a familiar example 
of the subjective in literature ; nevertheless, it is im- 
possible to observe a single line, or an entire speci- 
men, of the Laureate's poems, without feeling that 
they are in the handwriting of the same master, or 
of some disciple who has caught his fascinating and 
contagious style. 

I speak of his second limitation, with a full 
knowledge that many claim a dramatic crown for the 
author of the " Northern Farmer," " Tithonus," " St. 
Simeon Stylites," — for the poet of the Round 
Table and the Holy Grail. But isolated studies 
are not sufficient : a group of living men and women 
is necessary to broad dramatic action. Tennyson 
forces his characters to adapt themselves to pre- 
conceived, statuesque ideals of his own. His chief 
success is with those in humble life ; in " Enoch 
Arden," and elsewhere, he has very sweetly depicted 
the emotions of simple natures, rarely at a sublime 
height or depth of passion. He also draws — with 
an easy touch* occasionally found in the prose of 
the author of " The Warden " — a group of sturdy, 
refined, comfortable fellows upon their daily ram- 
bles, British and modern in their wholesome talk. 
But the true dramatist instinctively portrays either 



Cp.pageigi 
Style. 



Lack of the 
true dra- 
matic gift- 

Cp. " Poets 
of Amer- 
ica " : pp. 
204, 4 6 7- 



190 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



Effect of a 
secluded life. 

Cp. " Poets 
of Amer- 
ica " ." pp. 
i5S. 156. 



His ideal 
■personages, 



exceptional characters, or ordinary beings in im- 
passioned and extraordinary moods. This Tennyson 
rarely essays to do, except when presenting imagi- 
nary heroes of a visioned past. A great master of 
contemplative, descriptive, or lyrical verse, he falls 
short in that combination of action and passion which 
we call dramatic, and often gives us a series of mar- 
vellous tableaux in lieu of exalted speech and deeds. 
This lack of individuality is somewhat due to 
the influence of the period ; largely, also, to the 
habit of solitude which the poet has chosen to in- 
dulge. His life has been passed among his books 
or in the seclusion of rural haunts ; when in town, 
in the company of a few chosen friends. This has 
heightened his tendency to reverie, and unfitted him 
to distinguish sharply between men and men. The 
great novelists of our day, who correspond to the 
dramatists of a past age, have plunged into the roar 
of cities and the thick of the crowd, touching people 
closely and on every side. It must be owned that 
we do not find in their works that close knowledge 
of inanimate nature for which Tennyson has fore- 
gone "the proper study of mankind." The one 
seems to curtail the other, Wordsworth's writings 
being another example in point. "Men my brothers, 
men the workers," sings the Laureate, and is pleased 
to watch and encourage them, but always from afar. 
^ With few exceptions, then, his most poetical types 
of men and women are not substantial beings, but 
beautiful shadows, which, like the phantoms of a 
stereopticon, dissolve if you examine them too long 
and closely. His knights are the old bequest of chiv- 
alry, yet how stalwart and picturesque ! His early 
ideals of women are cathedral-paintings, — scarcely 



PERFECTLY ADAPTED TO HIS TIME. 



I 9 I 



flesh and blood, but certain attributes personified and 
made angelical. Where a story has been made for 
him he is more dramatic. Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin, 
Guinevere, are strong, wise, or beautiful, and so we 
find them in the chronicle from which the poet drew 
his legend. He has advanced them to the require- 
ments of modern Christianity, yet hardly created them 
anew. It is not improbable that Tennyson may force 
himself to compose some notably dramatic work ; but 
only through skill and strength of purpose, in this 
age, and with his habit of life. In a dramatic period 
he might find himself as sadly out of place as Bed- 
does, Darley, Landor, have been in his own century. 
By sheer good fortune he has flourished in a time 
calling for tenderness, thought, excellent workman- 
ship, and not for wild extremes of power. So chaste, 
varied, and tuneful are his notes, that they are scorn- 
fully compared to piano-music, in distinction from 
what he himself has entitled the " God-gifted organ 
voice of England." Take, however, the piano as an 
instrumental expression of recent musical taste, and 
see to what a height of execution, of capacity to give 
almost universal pleasure, the art of playing it has 
been carried. A great pianist is a great artist ; and it 
is no light fame which holds, with relation to poetry, 
the supremacy awarded to Liszt or Schumann by the 
refined musicians of our time. 

The cast of Tennyson's intellect is such, that his 
social rank, his training at an old university, and his 
philosophic learning have bred in him a liberal con- 
servatism. Increase of ease and of fame has strength- 
ened his inclination to accept things as they are, 
and, while recognizing the law of progress, to make 
no undue effort to hasten the order of events. He 



He may yet 
write a fine 
drama. 
P. S. See 
p. 413, and 
cp. "Poets 
of Amer- 
ica " .' p. 
467. 

Perfectly 
adapted to 
his time. 



A liberal 
conserva- 
tive : 



192 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



In politics, 



and in re- 
ligion. 



A rtvttic 

reverence. 



sees that "the thoughts of men are widened with the 
process of the suns," but is not the man to lead a 
reform, or to disturb the pleasant conditions in which 
his lot is cast. No personal wrong has allied him 
to the oppressed and struggling classes, yet he is 
too intellectual not to perceive that such wrongs 
exist. It must be remembered that Shakespeare and 
Goethe were no more heroic. Just so with his re- 
ligious attitude. Reverence for beauty would of itself 
dispose him to love the ivied Church, with all its 
art, and faith, and ancestral legendary associations ; 
and therefore, while amply reflecting in his verse the 
doubt and disquiet of the age, his tranquil sense of 
order, together with the failure of iconoclasts to sub- 
stitute any creed for that which they are breaking 
down, have brought him to the position of stanch Sir 
William Petty {pbiit 1687), who wrote in his will these 
memorable words : " As for religion, I die in the 
profession of that Faith, and in the practice of such 
Worship, as I find established by the law of my 
country, not being able to believe what I myself 
please, nor to worship God better than by doing as 
I would be done unto, and observing the laws of 
my country, and expressing my love and honor unto 
Almighty God by such signs and tokens as are un- 
derstood to be such by the people with whom I live, 
God knowing my heart even without any at all." 

So far as the " religion of art " is concerned, Ten- 
nyson is the most conscientious of devotees. Through- 
out his work we find a pure and thoughtful purpose, 
abhorrent of the mere licentious passion for beauty, 

"such as lurks 
In some wild Poet, when he works 
Without a conscience or an aim." 



WORDSWORTH UPON SCIENCE AND POETRY. 



193 



In my remarks upon " In Memoriam " I have shown 
that in one direction he readily keeps pace with the 
advance of modern thought. A leading mission of 
his art appears to be that of hastening the transition 
of our poetic nomenclature and imagery from the old 
or phenomenal method to one in accordance with 



knowledge and truth. 



His laurel is brighter for the 



fact that he constantly avails himself of the results 
of scientific discovery, without making them prosaic. 
This tendency, beginning with " L ocksley H all " and 
" The Princess," has increased with him to the present 
time!' It modtern story-writers can make the wonders 
of chemistry and astronomy the basis of tales more 
fascinating to children than the Arabian Nights, why 
should not the poet explore this field for the creation 
of a new imagery and expression ? There is a remark- 
able passage in Wordsworth's preface to the second 
edition of his poems ; a prophecy which, half a cen- 
tury ago, could only have been uttered by a man of 
lofty intellect and extraordinary premonition of changes 
even now at hand : — 

"The objects of the poet's thoughts are every- 
where ; though the eyes and senses of men are, it is 
true, his favorite guides, yet he will follow whereso- 
ever he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which 
to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last of all 
knowledge, — it is immortal as the heart of man. If 
the labors of the men of science should ever create 
any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our con- 
dition, and in the impressions which we habitually 
receive, the poet will sleep then no more than at 
present; he will be ready to follow the steps of the 
man of science, not only in those general indirect 
effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation 
9 m 



His verse 
conformed 
to modern 
progress and 
discovery. 



Words- 
worth upon 
the future 
relations of 
Science and 
Poetry. 
See also 
page 15. 



194 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



Tattle's 
analysis . 



into the midst of the objects of the science itself. 
The remotest discoveries of the chemist, the bot- 
anist, or mineralogist will be as proper objects of the 
poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if 
the time should ever come when these things shall be 
familiar to us, and the relations under which they are 
contemplated by the followers of the respective sciences 
shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoy- 
ing and suffering beings. If the time should ever come 
when what is now called science, thus familiarized to 
men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a fo?'m of flesh 
and blood, the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the 
transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus pro- 
duced, as a dear and genuine i?imate of the household of 
man." 

It is not unlikely that Tennyson was early im- 
pressed by these profound observations ; at all events, 
he has seen the truths of science becoming familiar 
"to the general," and has governed his art accord- 
ingly. The poet and man of science have a common 
ground, since few discoveries are made without the 
exercise of the poet's special gift, — the imagination. 
This faculty is required to enable a child to compre- 
hend any scientific paradox : for instance, that of the 
rotation of the Earth upon its axis. The imagination 
of an investigator advances from one step to another, 
and thus, in a certain sense, the mental processes of 
a Milton and a Newton are near akin. A plod- 
ding, didactic intellect is not strictly scientific ; nor 
will great poetry ever spring from a merely phan- 
tasmal brain : " best bard because the wisest," sings 
the poet. 

M. Taine's chapter upon Tennyson shows an intelli- 
gent perception of the Laureate's relations to his time, 



TAINE'S ESTIMATE OF HIM. 



195 



and especially to England ; but though containing a 
fine interlude upon the perennial freshness of a poet 
and the zest which makes nature a constant surprise 
to him, — declaring that the poet, in the presence of 
this world, is as the first man on the first day, — with 
all this excellence the chapter fails to rightly appre- 
ciate Tennyson, and overestimates Alfred de Musset 
in comparison. M. Taine's failure, I think, is due to 
the fact that no one, however successful in mastering 
a foreign language, can fully enter into that nicety 
of art which is the potent witchery of Tennyson's 
verse. The minute distinction between one poem 
and another, where the ideas are upon a level, and 
the difference is one of essential flavor, a foreigner 
loses without perceiving his loss. Precisely this deli- 
cacy of aroma separates Tennyson from other masters 
of verse. An English school-girl will see in his work 
a beauty that wholly escapes the most accomplished 
Frenchman : the latter may have ten times her knowl- 
edge of the language, but she "hears a voice he 
cannot hear" and feels an influence he never can 
fairly understand. Again, M. Taine does not allow 
credit for the importance of the works actually pro- 
duced by Tennyson. Largeness and proportion go 
for something in edifices ; and although De Musset, 
the errant, impassioned, suffering Parisian, had the 
sacred fire, and gave out burning flashes here and 
there, his light was fitful, nor long sustained, and we 
think rather of what one so gifted ought to have 
accomplished than of what he actually did. 

But Taine's catholicity, and the very fact that he 
is a foreigner, have protected him, on the other hand, 
from the overweening influence of Tennyson's art, that 
holds us 



Its defects. 



De' Musset. 



Wherein 
the French 
critic has 
succeeded. 



196 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



Tennyson 
and Byron . 



A contrast. 



" Above the subject, as strong gales 
Hold swollen clouds from raining " ; 

have made him a wiser judge of the poet's intellect- 
ual and imaginative position. In this matter he is 
like a deaf man watching a battle, undisturbed by 
the bewildering power of sound. His remarks upon 
the limitations of a " comfortable, luxurious, English " 
muse are not without reason ; all in all, he has a 
just idea of Tennyson's representative attitude, in the 
present state of British thought and art. He has 
laid too little stress upon the difference between 
Tennyson and Byron, by observing which we gather 
a clearer estimate of the former's genius than in any 
other way. 

Tennyson is the antithesis of Byron, in both the 
form and spirit of his song. The Georgian poet, 
with all the glow of genius, constantly giving utter- 
ance to condensed and powerful expressions, never 
attempted condensation in his general style ; there 
was nothing he so little cared for ; his inspiration 
must have full flow and break through every barrier; 
it was the roaring of a mighty wind, the current of 
a great river, — prone to overflow, and often to spread 
thinly and unevenly upon the shoals and lowlands. 
Tennyson, though composing an extended work, seeks 
the utmost terseness of expression ; howsoever com- 
posite his verse, it is tightly packed and cemented, 
and decorated to repletion with fretwork and precious 
stones ; nothing is neglected, nothing wasted, nothing 
misapplied. You cannot take out a word or sentence 
without marring the structure, nor can you find a 
blemish ; while much might be profitably omitted 
from Byron's longer poems, and their blemishes are 
frequent as the beauties. Prolixity, diffuseness, were 



TENNYSON AND BYRON 



197 



characteristic of Byron's time. Again, Tennyson is 
greater in analysis and synthesis, the two strong 
servitors of art. In sense of proportion Byron was 
all abroad. He struck bravely into a poem, and, 
trusting to the fire of his inspiration, let it write 
itself, neither seeing the end nor troubling his mind 
concerning it. Certainly this was true with regard 
to his greatest productions, " Childe Harold " and 
" Don Juan " ; though others, such as " Manfred," 
were exceptions through dramatic necessity. In Ten- 
nyson's method, as in architecture, we are sure that 
the whole structure is foreseen at the outset. Every 
block is numbered and swings into an appointed 
place ; often the final portions are made first, that 
the burden of the plan may be off the designer's 
mind. Leaving the matter of art, there is no less 
difference between the two poets as we consider 
their perceptive and imaginative gifts, and here the 
largeness of Byron's vision tells in his favor. Ten- 
nyson, sometimes grand and exalted, is equally deli- 
cate, — an artist of the beautiful in a minute way. 
Of this Byron took little account; his soul was ex- 
alted by the broad and mighty aspects of nature ; for 
mosaic- work he was unfitted : a mountain, the sea, 
a thunder-storm, a glorious woman, — such imposing 
objects aroused his noble rage. You never could 
have persuaded hint that the microcosm is equal 
to the macrocosm. Again, his subjectivity, so in- 
tense, was wholly different from Tennyson's, in that 
he became one with Nature, — a part of that which 
was around him. Tennyson is subjective, so far as 
a pervading sameness of style, a landscape seen 
through one shade of glass, can make him y yet few 
have stood more calmly aloof from Nature, and viewed 



1. Their 
difference 
in method', 



2. In per- 
ception and 
imagina- 
tion : 



3. In sub- 
jectivity ; 



198 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



4. In the 

matter of 
influence. 



An ideal 
foetic ca- 
reer. 



her more objectively. He contemplates things with- 
out identifying himself with them. In these respects, 
Tennyson and Byron not only are antithetical, but 
— each above his contemporaries — reflect the an- 
tithetical qualities of their respective eras. In con- 
clusion, it should be noticed that, although each has 
had a host of followers, Byron affected the spirit of 
the people at large, rather than the style of his 
brother poets ; while Tennyson, through the force of 
his admirable art, has affected the poets themselves, 
who do not sympathize with his spirit, but show 
themselves awed and instructed by his mastery of 
technics. Byron's influence was national ; that of 
Tennyson is professional to an unprecedented degree. 
If the temperament of Byron or of Mrs. Browning 
may be pronounced an ideal poetic temperament, 
certainly the career of Tennyson is an ideal poetic 
career. He has been less in contact with the rude 
outer world than any poet save Wordsworth ; again, 
while even the latter wrote much prose, Tennyson, 
" having wherewithal," and consecrating his life whol- 
ly to metrical art, has been a verse-maker and noth- 
ing else. He has passed through all gradations, 
from obscurity to laurelled fame ; beginning with the 
lightest lyrics, he has lived to write the one success- 
ful epic of the last two hundred years ; and though 
he well might rest content, if contentment were pos- 
sible to poets and men, with the glory of a far- 
reaching and apparently lasting renown, he still 
pursues his art, and seems, unlike Campbell and 
many another poet, to have no fear of the shadow 
of his own success. His lot has been truly enviable. 
We have observed the disadvantages of amateurship 
in the case of Landor, and noted the limitations 



A FINAL SUMMARY. 



199 



imposed upon Thomas Hood by the poverty which 
clung to him through life ; but Tennyson has made 
the former condition a vantage-ground, and thereby 
carried his work to a perfection almost unattainable 
in the experience of a professional, hard-working lit- 
terateur. Writing as much and as little as he chose, 
he has escaped the drudgery which breeds contempt. 
His song has been the sweeter for his retirement, 
like that of a cicada piping from a distant grove. 



V. 

Reviewing our analysis of his genius and works, 
we find in Alfred Tennyson the true poetic irritability, 
a sensitiveness increased by his secluded life, and dis- 
played from time to time in "the least little touch 
of the spleen " ; we perceive him to be the most 
faultless of modern poets in technical execution, but 
one whose verse is more remarkable for artistic per- 
fection than for dramatic action and inspired fervor. 
His adroitness surpasses his invention. Give him a 
theme, and no poet can handle it so exquisitely, — yet 
we feel that, with the Malory legends to draw upon, 
he could go on writing " Idyls of tiie Kin g " forever. 
We find him objective in the spirit of his. verse, but 
subjective in the decided manner of his style; pos- 
sessing a sense of proportion, based upon the high- 
est analytic and synthetic powers, — a faculty that can 
harmonize the incongruous thoughts, scenes, and gen- 
eral details of a composite period; in thought resem- 
bling Wordsworth, in art instructed by Keats, but 
rejecting the passion of Byron, or having nothing in 
his nature that aspires to it; finally, an artist so per- 
fect in a widely extended range, that nothing of his 



Cp. " Poets 

of Amer- 
ica " : pp. 
222, 223. 



Summary 
of the fore- 
going analy- 
sis. 



200 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



work can be spared, and, in this respect, approaching 
Horace and outvying Pope; not one of the great 
wits nearly allied to madness, yet possibly to , be ac- 
cepted as a wiser poet, serene above the frenzy of 
the storm ; certainly to be regarded, in time to come, 
as, all in all, the fullest representative of the refined, 
speculative, (fomplex Victorian age. 



CHAPTER VI. 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



HAVING acknowledged Tennyson as master of 
the idyllic school, — and having seen that his 
method, during the last thirty years, whatever its 
strength or weakness, has been conspicuous in the 
prevailing form and spirit of English verse, — it does 
not seem amiss, in the case of this poet, to supple- 
ment my review of his genius and works by some 
remarks upon the likeness which he bears to the 
Dorian father of idyllic song, and upon the relations 
of both the ancient and modern poets to their respec- 
tive eras. » 

I. 

Until within a very recent period, the text of the 
Greek idyls was not embraced in the course of study 
at our foremost American colleges. Nevertheless, the 
Greek Reader which, a score of years ago, was largely 
in use for the preparatory lessons of the high schools, 
contained, amidst an assorted lot of passages from 
various writers, that wonderful elegy, "The Epitaph 
of Bion," whose authorship is attributed to Moschus. 
The novelty, the beauty, the fresh and modern thought 
of this undying poem were visible even to the school- 
fagged intellect of youths to whom poetry was a vague 
9* 



Supple- 
mental no- 
tice of Ten- 
nyson and 
the idyllic 
school. 



" The Epi- 
taph of 
Bion.'''' 
Moschus, 
III. 



202 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



Obligations 
to the Greek 
idyllic poets. 



delight. Well might they be, for this elegy, — in 
which the pain and passion of lamentation for a 
brother-minstrel are sung in strains echoing those 
which Bion himself had chanted in artificial sorrow 
for the mystic Adonis, — this perpetual elegy was the 
mould, if not the inspiration, of four great English 
dirges : laments beyond which the force of poetic an- 
guish can no further go, and each of which is but a 
later affirmation that the ancient pupil of Theocritus 
found the one key-note to which all high idyllic elegy 
should be attuned thenceforth. 

Having made a first acquaintance with the work of 
Tennyson, — and who does not remember how new and 
delicious the lyrics of the rising English poet seemed 
to us, half surfeited, as we were, with the fulness of 
his predecessors ? — I could not fail to observe a re- 
semblance between certain portions of his verse and 
the only Greek idyl which I then knew. For exam- 
ple, in the use of the elegiac refrain, in the special 
imagery, in the adaptation of landscape and color to 
the feeling of a poem, and, often, in the suggestion of 
the feeling by the mere scenic effect. It was not till 
after that thorough knowledge of the English master's 
art, which has been no less absorbing and perilous 
than instructive to the singers of our period, that I 
was led to study the entire relics of the Greek idyllic 
poets. Then, for the first time, I became aware of 
the immense obligations of Tennyson to Theocritus, 
not only for the method, sentiment, and purpose, but 
for the very form and language, which render beautiful 
much of his most widely celebrated verse. 

Three points were distinctly brought in view: — 
i. The likeness of the Victorian to the Alexandrian 
age. 



DESIGN OF THIS CHAPTER. 



203 



2. The close study made by Tennyson of the Syra- 
cusan idyls, resulting in the adjustment of their struc- 
ture to English theme and composition, and in the 
artistic imitation of their choicest passages. 

3. Hence, his own discovery of his proper function 
as a poet, and the gradual evolution and shaping of 
his whole literary career. 

II. 

The design of this supplemental chapter is to ex- 
hibit some of the evidences on which the foregoing 
points are taken. They may interest the student of 
comparative minstrelsy, as an addition to his list of 
" Historic Counterparts " in literature, and are worth 
the attention of that host of readers, so wonted to 
the faultless art of Tennyson that each trick and 
turn of his verse, his every image and thought, are 
more familiar to them than were the sentimental 
ditties of Moore and the romantic cantos of Scott 
and Byron to the poetic taste of an earlier genera- 
tion. And how few, indeed, of his pieces could we 
spare ! so few, that when he does trifle with his art 
the critics laugh like school-boys delighted to catch 
the master tripping for once ; not wholly sure but 
that the matter may be noble, because, forsooth, he 
composed it. Yet men, wont to fare sumptuously, 
will now and then leave their delicate viands un- 
tasted, and hanker with lusty appetite for ruder and 
more sinewy fare. We turn again to Byron for sweep 
and fervor, to Coleridge and Shelley for the music 
that is divine •, and it is through Wordsworth that 
we commune with the very spirits of the woodland 
and the misty mountain winds. 



Illustration 
of the fore- 
going points. 



204 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



Thefather 
of idyllic 
song. 



It will not harm the noble army of verse-readers to 
be guided for a moment to the original fountain of that 
stream from which they take their favorite draughts. 
The Sicilian idyls were very familiar to the dramatists 
and songsters of Shakespeare's time, and a knowledge 
of them was affected, at least, by the artificial jinglers 
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nowa- 
days, we have Homer and Horace by heart ; but The- 
ocritus, to most of us, is but the echo of a melodious 
name. As the creator of the fourth great order of 
poetry, the composite, or idyllic, he bears to it the 
relation of Homer to epic, Pindar to lyric, yEschylus 
to dramatic verse ; and if he had not sung as he sung, 
in Syracuse and Alexandria, two thousand years ago, 
it is doubtful whether modern English fancy would 
have been under the spell of that minstrelsy by which 
it was of late so justly and delightfully enthralled. 

I do not know that any extended references to 
our topic were brought together before the appear- 
ance of a monograph, by the present writer, in which 
the substance of this chapter first appeared in print; 
nevertheless, within the last decade, during a revival 
of the study and translation of the Greek poets, allu- 
sions to the relations of Tennyson and Theocritus 
have been made, and parallel passages occasionally 
noted, — as by Thackeray in his Anthology, and by 
Snow in his appendix to the Clarendon school edi- 
tion of Theocritus, — such waifs confirming me in my 
recognition of the evidence on which the foregoing 
statements are adventured. But, even now, many of 
the Laureate's reviewers, while noticing the "itera- 
tion " of his refrains, the arrangement of his idyllic 
songs, etc., seem to be unconscious of the influences 
under which these at the outset were produced. 



THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. 



205 



Let us briefly consider the likeness of the Victorian 
to the Alexandrian age. The latter covered the time 
wherein the city, by which Alexander marked the 
splendor of his western conquests, was the capital 
of a new Greece, and had grouped within it all that 
was left of Hellenic philosophy, beauty, and power. 
Latin thought and imagination were still in their 
dawning, and Alexandria was the centre, the new 
Athens, of the civilized world. But the period, if 
not that of a decadence, was reflective, critical, schol- 
arly, rather than creative ; a comfortable era, in which 
to live and enjoy the gathered harvests of what had 
gone before. All the previous history of Greece led 
up to the high Alexandrian refinement. Her litera- 
ture had completed a round of four hundred years, 
of which the first three centuries, in the slower prog- 
ress of national adolescence, comprised an epic and 
lyric period, reaching from Homer and Hesiod to 
Anacreon and Pindar. The remainder was the golden 
Attic age, the time of the Old, Middle, and New 
Comedy, of the dramatists from ^Eschylus to Aris- 
tophanes. Greek poetry then passed its noontide ; 
the Alexandrian school arose, flourishing for two 
centuries before the birth of Christ. 

Literary accomplishments now were widely diffused. 
There was a mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease. 
Tact and scholarship so abounded, that it was diffi- 
cult to draw the line between talent and genius. 
We see a period of scholia and revised and anno- 
tated editions of the elder writers; wherein was done 
for Homer, Plato, the Hebrew Scriptures, what is 
now doing for Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe. 
Philology came into being, and criticism began to 
clog the fancy. Schoell says that "the poets were 



Comparison 
of the Victo- 
rian and 
A lexan- 
drian e?'as. 



Cp. Matte* 
Hist, de 
FEcole 
d'A lexan- 
drie. 



206 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



Schoell: 
Hist, de la 
Litt. 
Grecque 
Profane. 



Distinction 
between the 
Greek and 
English 
tongzies. 



Ptolemy II. 



deeply read, but wanting in imagination, and often 
also in judgment." It was impossible for most to 
rise above the influence of the time. Science, how- 
ever, made great strides. In material growth it was 
indeed a " wondrous age," an era of inventions, 
travel, and discovery : the period of Euclid and Ar- 
chimedes ; of Ptolemy with his astronomers ; of Hiero, 
with his galleys long as clipper-ships ; of academies, 
museums, theatres, lecture-halls, gymnasia; of a hun- 
dred philosophies ; of geographers, botanists, casuists, 
scholiasts, reformers, and what not, — all springing 
into existence and finding support in the luxurious, 
speculative, bustling, news-devouring hurly-burly of 
that strangely modern Alexandrian time. 

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the analogy which 
my readers already have drawn for themselves. It 
is not an even one. There is no parallel between 
the Greek and English languages. The former is 
copious, but simple, and a departure from the Attic 
purity was in itself a decline to vagueness and af- 
fectation. Our own tongue grows richer and stronger 
every year. Again, though England has also passed 
through great dramatic and lyric periods, our modern 
cycles are not of antique duration, but are likely to 
repeat themselves again and again. Our golden year 
is shorter, and the seasons in their turns come often 
round. Nevertheless, at the close of the poetical 
renaissance which marked the first quarter of the 
nineteenth century, English literature drifted into an 
indecisive, characterless period, bearing a resemblance 
to that of Alexandria when Ptolemy Philadelphus 
commenced his reign. 

That liberal and ambitious monarch confirmed the 
structure of an empire, and made the capital city 



THE GREEK IDYLLIC SCHOOL. 



207 



attractive and renowned. The wisest and most fa- 
mous scholars resorted to his court, but not even 
imperial patronage could restore the lost spirit of 
Greek creative art. There was a single exception. 
A poet of original and abounding genius, nurtured 
in the beautiful island of Sicily, where the sky and 
sea are bluer, the piny mountains, with yEtna at 
their head, more kingly, the breezes fresher, the 
rivulets more musical, and the upland pastures greener 
than upon any other shores which the Mediterranean 
borders, — such a poet felt himself inspired to utter 
a fresh and native melody, even in that over-learned 
and bustling time. Disdaining any feeble variations 
of worn-out themes, he saw that Greek poetry had 
achieved little in the delineation of common, every- 
day life, and so flung himself right upon nature, 
which he knew and reverenced well ; and erelong the 
pastoral and town idyls of Theocritus, with their 
amcebean dialogue and elegant occasional songs, won 
the ear of both the fashionable and critical worlds. 
Although his subjects were entirely novel, he availed 
himself, in form, of all his predecessors' arts ; com- 
posing in the new Doric, the most liquid, colloquial, 
and flexible of the dialects : and thus he fashioned 
his eidullia, — little pictures of real life upon the hill- 
side and in the town, among the high and low, — 
portraying characters with a few distinct touches in 
lyric, epic, or dramatic form, and -often by a com- 
bination of the whole. It is not my province here 
to show who were his immediate teachers, or from 
what rude island ditties and mimes he conceived and 
shaped his art; only, to state that Theocritus found 
one field of verse then unworked, and so availed 
himself of it as to make it his own, capturing the 



Theocritus. 



Birth of the 
idyl. 



208 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



Kingsley's 
"Alexan- 
dria a?idher 
Schools." 



hearts of those who still loved freshness and beauty, 
and forthwith attaining such excellence that the relics 
left us by him and two of his pupils are even now 
the wonder and imitation of mankind. A few sen- 
tences from Charles Kingsley's reference to the father 
of idyllic poetry tell the truth as simply and clearly 
as it can be told : — 

" One natural strain is heard amid all this artificial jingle, 
— that of Theocritus. It is not altogether Alexandrian. 
Its sweetest notes were learnt amid the chestnut-groves 
and orchards, the volcanic glens and sunny pastures of 
Sicily ; but the intercourse between the courts of Hiero and 
the Ptolemies seems to have been continual. Poets and 
philosophers moved freely from one to the other, and found 

a like atmosphere in both One can well conceive the 

delight which his idyls must have given to the dusty Alex- 
andrians, pent up forever between sea and sand-hills, drink- 
ing the tank-water and never hearing the sound of a run- 
ning stream ; whirling, too, forever, in all the bustle and 
intrigue of a great commercial and literary city. To them 
and to us also. I believe Theocritus is one of the poets 
who will never die. He sees men and things, in his own 
light way, truly ; and he describes them simply, honestly, 
with little careless touches of pathos and humor, while he 
floods his whole scene with that gorgeous Sicilian air, like 
one of Titian's pictures ; . . . . and all this told in a lan- 
guage and a metre which shapes itself almost unconsciously, 
wave after wave, into the most luscious song." 

It was in this* wise that Theocritus founded and 
endowed the Greek idyllic school. Let us see how 
Tennyson, living in a somewhat analogous period, 
may be compared with him. How far has the repre- 
sentative idyllist of the nineteenth century profited 
by the example of his prototype ? To what extent is 
the one indebted to the other for the structure, the 



GROWTH OF THE LAUREATE'S STYLE. 



209 



manner, it may be even the matter, of many of his 
poems ? 

We are uninformed of the year in which the boy 
Tennyson was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, 
but find him there in 1829, taking the chancellor's 
gold medal for English verse ; this by the poem " Tim- 
buctoo," a creditable performance for a lad of nine- 
teen, and favored with the approval of the "Athenaeum." 
It was thought to show traces of Milton, Shelley, and 
Wordsworth. In the years 1826 -1829 a Cambridge 
reprint was made of the Kiessling edition of Theoc- 
ritus, Bion, and Moschus, including a Doric Lexicon, 
the whole in two octavo volumes ; an excellent text 
and commentary, and altogether the most noticeable 
English edition of the Sicilian poets since that superb 
Oxford Theocritus, edited' by the laureate, Warton, 
which appeared in 1770. The publication of a Cam- 
bridge text must have directed unusual attention to 
the study of these classics, and if Tennyson did not 
place them upon his list for the public examinations, 
there can be little doubt that he at this time famil- 
iarized himself with their difficult and exquisite verse. 
His present admiration of them is well known. 

I have shown that in his early poems we find an 
open loyalty to Wordsworth's canon of reliance upon 
nature, and occasionally Wordsworth's mannerism 
and language, with something of the music of Shelley 
and the sensuous beauty of Keats. A study of old 
English ballad-poetry is also apparent. The influence 
of the great Italian poets is quite marked ; whether 
by reflection from the Chaucerian and Elizabethan 
periods, or by more direct absorption, it is difficult to 
pronounce. The truth was, that the poet began his 
career at an intercalary, transition period. To quote 



Tennyson at 
Cambridge. 



Formation 
of his style. 



210 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



The result 
a?i idyllic 
method. 



Two kinds 
of resem- 
blance. 



from a eulogistic book-note by E. A. Poe : " Matters 
were now verging to their worst; and, at length, in 
Tennyson, poetic inconsistency attained its extreme. 
But it was precisely this extreme which wrought 
in him a natural and inevitable revulsion ; leading 
him first to contemn, and secondly to investigate, 
his early manner, and finally to winnow from its 
magnificent elements the truest and purest of all po- 
etical styles." 

In all that concerns form the young poet soon 
found himself in sympathy with the Greek idyllic 
compositions. He saw the opportunity for work 
after these models, and willingly yielded himself to 
their beautiful influence. It has never left him, but 
is present in his latest and most sustained produc- 
tions. But there is a difference between his maturer 
work — which is the adjustment of the idyllic method 
to native, modern conceptions, with a delightful pres- 
entation of English landscape and atmosphere, and 
the manners and dialects of English life — and the 
experimental, early poems, which were written upon 
antique themes. Of these " (Enone " and " The Lotos- 
Eaters " appeared in the collection of 1832, and in 
the same volume are other poems appealing more 
directly to modern sympathies, which show traces of 
the master with whom Tennyson had put his genius 
to school. 



III. 

There are two modes in which the workmanship 
of one poet may resemble that of another. The first, 
while not subjecting an author to the charge of direct 
appropriation, in the vulgar sense of plagiarism, is 



HYLAS' AND 'GODIVA. 



211 



detected by critical analogy, and, of the two, is more 
easily recognized by the skilled reader. It is the 
mode which involves either a sympathetic treatment 
of rhythmical breaks, pauses, accents, alliterations ; 
a correspondence of the architecture of two poems, 
with parallel interludes and effects ; correspondence 
of theme, allowing for difference of place and period ; 
or, a correspondence of scenic and metrical purpose ; 
in fine, general analogy of atmosphere and tone. 
The second, more obvious and commonplace, mode 
is that displaying immediate coincidence of structure, 
language, and thought ; a mode which, in the hands 
of inferior men, leaves the users at the mercy of their 
dullest reviewers. 

A citation of passages, exemplifying these two kinds 
of resemblance between the Sicilian idyls and the 
poetry of Tennyson, will confirm and illustrate the 
statements upon which this chapter is based. The 
instance first set forth is that of a general, and not 
the special, likeness ; but no subsequent attempt is 
made to classify the obligations of our modern poet 
to the ancient, as it is believed that the reader will 
easily distinguish for himself the significant analogies 
in each collection. 

" Hylas," the celebrated thirteenth idyl of Theoc- 
ritus, is one of the most perfect which have come 
down to our time. It is not a bucolic poem, but 
classified as narrative or semi-epic in character, yet 
exhibits many touches of the bucolic sweetness ; is a 
poem of seventy-five verses, written in the honey- 
flowing pastoral hexameter, so distinct, in caesura 
and dactylic structure, from the verse of Homer, and 
commencing thus : — 



" Hylas'''' 
and " Go~ 
divay 



212 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 




" Not only for ourselves the God begat 
Eros — whoever, Nicias, was his sire — 
As once we thought ; nor unto us the first 
Have lovely things seemed lovely ; not to us 
Mortals, who cannot see beyond a day ; 
But he, that heart of brass, Amphitryon's son, 
Who braved the ruthless lion, — he, too, loved 
A youth, the graceful Hylas." x 

As a counterpart to this, and directly modelled 
upon it in form, take the " Saliva " of Tennyson, — 
that lovely and faultless poem, whose rhythm is full 
of the melodious quality which gives specific distinc- 
tion to the Laureate's blank-verse ; a " flower," of 
which so many followers now have the "seed" that 
it has taken its place as the standard idyllic meas- 
ure of our language. 

"Godiva" is a narrative or semi-epic idyl, which, 
like the " Hylas," contains — after a didactic pre- 
lude, divided from the story proper — just seventy-five 
verses, and commences thus : — 

" Not only we, the latest seed of Time, 
New men, that in the flying of a wheel 



1 This translation, and many which follow, I have rendered in 
blank-verse, not because I deem that measure at all adequate 
in effect to the original. But even a tolerable version in " Eng- 
lish hexameter " would require more labor than is needful for 
our immediate purpose ; and again, blank-verse is the form in 
which the English poet chiefly has availed himself of his Dorian 
models. I have translated most of the passages as rapidly as 
possible ; only taking care, first, that my versions should be lit- 
eral ; secondly, that by no artifice they should seem to resemble 
the work of Tennyson any more closely than in fact they do. 

Scholars will recall the fact that the text of the Bucolicorum 
Grcecorum Reliquice is greatly in dispute. In some instances the 
editions which I have followed may differ from their wonted 
readings. 



CENONE. 



213 



Cry down the past, not only we, that prate 

Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well, 

And loathed to see them overtaxed ; but she 

Did more, and underwent, and overcame, 

The woman of a thousand summers back, 

Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled 

In Coventry — " 

But it is in the " CEnone " that we discover Tenny 
son's earliest adaptation of that refrain which was a 
striking beauty of the pastoral elegiac verse. 

" O mother Ida, hearken ere I die," 

is the analogue of (Theocr., II.) 

" See thou, whence came my love, O lady Moon " ; 

of the refrain to the lament of Daphnis (Theocr., I.), 

" Begin, dear Muse, begin the woodland song " ; 

and of the recurrent wail in the "Epitaph of Bion" 
(Mosch., III.), 

" Begin, Sicilian Muses, begin the song of your sorrow ! " 

Throughout the poem the Syracusan manner and feel- 
ing are strictly and nobly maintained ; and, while we 
are considering " CEnone," a few points of more exact 
resemblance may be noted : — 

The Thalysia (Theocr., VII. 21-23). 
" Whither at noonday dost thou drag thy feet ? 
For now the lizard sleeps upon the wall, 
The crested lark is wandering no more — " 

The Enchantress (Theocr., II. 38-41). 
"Lo, now the sea is silent, and the winds 
Are hushed. Not silent is the wretchedness 
Within my breast ; but I am all aflame 
With love for him who made me thus forlorn, — 
A thing of evil, neither maid nor wife." 



"CEnone. 



The elegiac 
refrain. 



214 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



Note : In his 
revised edi- 
tion the Lau- 
reate substi- 
tuted " the 
winds are 
dead ' ' for 
" the cicala 
sleep s." 
(1899.) 



" The Lotos- 
Eaters." 



The Young Herdsman (Theocr., XX. 19, 20; 30, 31). 

" O shepherds, tell me truth ! Am I not fair ? 
Hath some god made me, then, from what I was, 
Off-hand, another being? .... 
Along the mountains all the women call 
Me beautiful, all love me." 

CEnone. 
" For now the noonday quiet holds the hill : 
The grasshopper is silent in the grass : 
The lizard, with his shadow on the stone, 
Rests like a shadow, and the cicala sleeps. 
The purple flowers droop : the golden bee 
Is lily-cradled : I alone awake. 
My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love, 1 
My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim, 
And I am all aweary of my life. 

"Yet, mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 
Fairest — why fairest wife? Am I not fair? 
My love hath told me so a thousand times. 
Methinks I must be fair, for yesterday," etc. 

"The Lotos-Eaters," another imaginative present- 
ment of an antique theme, — full of Tennyson's ex- 
cellences, no less than of early mannerisms since fore- 
gone, — while Gothic in some respects, is charged 
from beginning to end with the effects and very lan- 
guage of the Greek pastoral poets. As in "CEnone," 
there is no consecutive imitation of any one idyl ; but 
the work is curiously filled out with passages bor- 
rowed here and there, as the growth of the poem 
recalled them at random to the author's mind. The 
idyls of Theocritus often have been subjected to this 



1 "Mine eyes are full of tears, my heart of grief." 

Second Part of King Henrv VI, Act II. Sc. 3. 



THE LOTOS-EATERS} 



215 



process ; first, by Virgil, in several of whose eclogues 
the component parts were culled from his master, as 
one selects from a flower-plot a white rose, a red, 
and then a- sprig of green, to suit the exigencies of 
color, while the wreath grows under the hand. Pope, 
among moderns, has followed the method of Virgil, 
as may be observed in either of his four " Pastorals." 
The process used by Pope is tame, artificial, and 
avowed ; in " The Lotos-Eaters " it is subtile, mas- 
terly, yet of a completeness which only parallel quo- 
tations can display. 

The Argonauts (Theocr., XIII.) come in the after- 
noon unto a land of cliffs and thickets and streams; 
of meadows set with sedge, whence they cut for their 
couches sharp flowering-rush and the low galingale. 
" In the afternoon " the Lotos-Eaters " come unto a 
land " where 

"Through mountain clefts the dale 
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down 
Bordered with palm, and many a winding vale 
And meadow, set with slender galingale." 

Except the landscape, all this, in either poem, is after 
Homer, from the ninth book of the Odyssey. The 
" Choric Song " follows, of them to whom 

" Evermore 
Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar, 
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam " ; 

and in this, the feature of the poem, are certain coin- 
cidences to which I refer: — 

Enropa (Mosch., II. 3, 4). 

"When Sleep, that sweeter on the eyelids lies 

Than honey, and doth fetter down the eyes 
• With gentle bond." 



A culling 
process. 



216 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



The Wayfarers (Theocr., V. 50, 51). 
" Here, if you come, your feet shall tread on wool, 
The fleece of lambs, softer than downy Sleep." 

Ibid. (45-49). 
"Here are the oaks, and here is galingale, 
Here bees are sweetly humming near their hives; 
Here are twin fountains of cool water; here 
The birds are prattling on the trees, — the shade 
Is deeper than beyond; and here the pine 
From overhead casts down to us its cones." 

Ibid. (31, 34). 

" More sweetly will you sing 
Propt underneath the olive, in these groves. 
Here are cool waters plashing down, and here 
The grasses spring ; and here, too, is a bed 
Of leafage, and the locusts babble here." 

The Choice (Mosch., V. 4-13). 

'When the gray deep has sounded, and the sea 
Climbs up in foam and far the loud waves roar, 
I seek for land and trees, and flee the brine, 
And earth to me is welcome : the dark wood 
Delights me, where, although the great wind blow, 
The pine-tree sings. An evil life indeed 
The fisherman's, whose vessel is his home, 
The sea his toil, the fish his wandering prey. 
But sweet to me to sleep beneath the plane 
Thick-leaved ; and near me I would love to hear 
The babble of the spring, that murmuring 
Perturbs him not, but is the woodman's joy." 



Passages 
rearranged 
{/or exami- 
nation) in 
the order of 
the fore- 
going trans- 
lations. 



The Lotos-Eaters. 
"Music, that gentlier on the spirit lies 
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes ; 
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. 

" Here are cool mosses deep, 
And through the moss the ivies creep, 



/ 



THE LAUREATE'S ENGLISH IDYLS. 



217 



And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, 
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. 



Lo ! sweetened with the summer light 
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow, 
Drops in a silent autumn night. 



y. 



But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly, 

How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly) 

To watch the emerald-colored water falling 

Through many a woven acanthus-wreath divine ! 

Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine, 

Only to hear were sweet, stretched out beneath the pine. 

Hateful is the dark blue sky, 
Vaulted o'er the dark blue sea. 

Is there any peace 
In ever climbing up the climbing wave ? 

All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone. 

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, 
With half-shut eyes ever to seem 
Falling asleep in a half-dream." 

Dismissing these two poems, the earlier of Tenny- 
son's experiments upon classical myths, let us look at 
another class of idyls, wherein the Theocritan method 
is adapted to modern themes ; where the form is Do- 
rian, but the feeling, color, and thought are thoroughly 
and naturally English. Of "Godiva" I have already 
spoken, and the Laureate's rural compositions in 
blank-verse are directly in point, reflecting every fea- 
ture of the so-called " pastoral idyls " of Theocritus. 
" The Gardener's Daughter," " Audley Court," " Walk- 
10 



His modern 
idyls. 



2l8 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



The isomet- 
ric song. 



A mcebean 
contests. 



ing to the Mail," " Edwin Morris, or the Lake," and 
"The Golden Year" are modelled upon such patterns 
as " The Thalysia," " The Singers of Pastorals," " The 
Rival Singers," and "The Triumph of Daphnis." In 
all of them, cultured and country-loving friends are 
sauntering, resting, singing, sometimes lunching in 
the open air among the hills, the waters, and the 
woods ; in all of them there is dialogue, healthful 
philosophy, a wealth of atmosphere and color ; and 
in nearly all we see for the first time successfully 
handled in English and made really melodious the 
true isometric song as found in Theocritus. The effects 
of this are not produced by any change to a strictly 
lyrical measure, but it is composed in the metre of 
the whole poem ; the Greek, of course, in hexam- 
eter, the English, in unrhymed iambic-pentameter 
verse. Still, it is a song, with stanzaic divisions into 
distiches, triplets, quatrains, etc., as the case may be. 
As in Theocritus, so in Tennyson, two songs by rival 
comrades sometimes are balanced against each other: 
a love-ditty against a proverbial or worldly-wise lyric, 
— the latter, in the modern idyl, frequently rising to 
the height of modern faith and progress. These 
" blank-verse songs," as they are termed, are a spe- 
cial beauty of the Laureate's verse. Where each 
stanza has a refrain or burden, as in " Tears, idle 
tears," " Our enemies have fallen, have fallen," etc., 
they partake both of the bucolic and elegiac manner; 
but elsewhere Tennyson's personages discourse against 
each other as in the eclogues proper. For example, 
the two songs in " Audley Court," 

" Oh ! who would fight and march and countermarch ? " 
■" Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, sleep and dream of me ! " 



ISOMETRIC SONG. 



219 



are the Doppelganger, so to speak, of the ditties sung 
respectively by Milo and Battus, in " The Harvesters " 
(Theocr., X.). Thirteen of these songs, many of them 
in " riddling triplets of old time," are scattered through 
" Audley Court," " The Golden Year," " The Prin- 
cess," and the completed " Idyls of the King." And 
where Tennyson's rustic and civic graduates content 
themselves with jest and debate, it is after a semi- 
amcebean fashion, which no student of the Syracusan 
idyls can fail to recognize. 

Even in " The Gardener's Daughter " there are pas- 
sages which respond to the verse of Theocritus. That 
simply perfect idyl, " Dora," and such pieces as " The 
Brook " and " Sea-Dreams," are more original, yet 
the legitimate outgrowth of the antique school. The 
blank-verse idyls of Tennyson, though connecting him 
with Theocritus, do not establish a ratio between the 
relations of the ancient and the modern poet to their 
respective periods. The Laureate is a more genuine, 
because more independent and English, idyllist and 
lyrist in "The May Queen," "The Miller's Daugh- 
ter," "The Talking Oak," "The Grandmother," and 
"Northern Farmer, Old Style." Theocritus created his 
own school, with no models except those obtainable 
from the popular mimes and catches of his own re- 
gion ; just as Burns, availing himself of the simple 
Scottish ballads, lifted the poetry of Scotland to an 
eminent and winsome individuality. 



IV. 

The co-relations of Theocritus and Tennyson lie in 
the fact that our poet discovered years ago that a 
period had arrived for poetry of the idyllic or com- 



" The May 
Queen" etc. 



Burns. 



Theocritus 
and Ten- 
nyson. 



_ 



220 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



Tke Swal- 
low Song. 



posite order; and that much of the manner, form, 
and language of the latter is directly taken from the 
former. Mr. Tennyson's maturer poems, " The Prin- 
cess " and " The Idyls of the King," are written 
Dorian-wise. " The Holy Grail " and its associate 
legendary pieces occupy the same position in his life- 
work which those semi-epic poems, " The Dioscuri," 
" The Infant Heracles," and " Heracles the Lion- 
Slayer " hold in the relics of Theocritus. The 
" Morte d' Arthur " is written as he would have trans- 
lated Homer, judging from his version of a passage 
in the Iliad, and was composed years before the other 
" Idyls of the King," and in a noticeably different 
style. For all this, — especially in the speech of the 
departing Arthur, — it is semi-idyllic, to say the least ; 
a grand poem, a chant without a discord, strong 
throughout with ringing, monosyllabic Saxon verse. 

The Swallow Song, in " The Princess," is modelled 
upon the isometric songs in the third and eleventh 
idyls of Theocritus, bearing a special likeness to the 
lover's serenade in Idyl III., as divided by Ahrens 
and others into stanzas of three verses each. There 
is also some correspondence of imagery : — 

The Serenade (Theocr., III. 12-14). 
" Would that I were 
The humming-bee, to pass within thy cave, 
Thridding the ivy and the feather-fern ■ 
By which thou 'rt hidden." 

Cyclops (Theocr., XI. 54-57). 
" O that I had been born a thing with fins 
To sink anear thee, and to kiss thy hands, — 
If thou deniedst thy mouth, — and now to bring 
White lilies to thee, and the red-leaved bloom 
Of tender poppies ! " 



MINOR RESEMBLANCES. 



221 



The Princess (Book IV.). 

" O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light 
Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill, 
And cheep and twitter twenty million loves." 

"O were I thou that she might take me in, 
And lay me on her bosom, and her heart 
Would rock the snowy cradle till I died." 



Throughout the work of Tennyson we meet with 
isolated passages which also seem to be reflections or 
reminiscences of verses in the relics of the Syracusan 
triad. Where the thought or image of such a passage 
is of a familiar type, common to many classical writers, 
there is often a flavor about it to indicate that its im- 
mediate inspiration was caught from Theocritus, Bion, 
or Moschus. One of the following comparisons, how- 
ever, can only be made between the two poets from 
whom it is derived. Many have been struck by the 
novelty, no less than the fitness, of an image which 
I will quote from "Enid." Nothing in earlier Eng- 
lish poetry suggests it, and I was surprised to find a 
conceit, which, with a shade of difference, is so akin, 
in the semi-epic fragment of " The Dioscuri." The 
modern verse and image are the more excellent : — 

The Dioscuri (Theocr., XXII. 46-50). 

" His massive breast and back were rounded high 
With flesh of iron, like that of which is wrought 
A forged colossus. On his stalwart arms, 
•> Sheer over the huge shoulder, standing out 
% Were muscles, — like the rolled and spheric stones, 
Which, in its mighty eddies whirling on, 
The winter-flowing stream hath worn right smooth 
This side and that." 



Miscellane- 
ous passages 
selected/or 
comparison. 



222 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



Enid. 
" And bared the knotted column of his throat, 
The massive square of his heroic breast, 
And arms on which the standing muscle sloped 
As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone, 
Running too vehemently to break upon it." 

Pastorals (Theocr., IX. 31, 32). 
"Dear is cicala to cicala, dear 
The ant to ant, and hawk to hawk, but I 
Hold only dear to me the Muse and Song." 

The Princess (Book III.). 
" ' The crane,' I said, ' may chatter of the crane, 
The dove may murmur of the dove, but I 
An eagle clang an eagle to the sphere.' " 

The Syracusan Gossips (Theocr., XV. 102-105). 
" How fair to thee the gentle-footed Hours 
Have brought Adonis back from Acheron ! 
Sweet Hours, and slowest of the Blessed Ones : 
But still they come desired, and ever bring 
Gifts to all mortals." x 

Love and Duty. 
''The slow, sweet Hours that bring us all things good, 
\ \The slow, sad Hours that bring us all things ill, 
\ And all good things from evil." 

The Bridal of Helen (Theocr., XVIII. 47, 48). 
" In Dorian letters on the bark 
We '11 carve for men to see, 
Pay honor to me, all who mark, 
For I am Helen's tree." 



: I thought how once Theocritus had sung 
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years, 
Who each one in a gracious hand appears 
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young." 

Mrs. Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese. 



MINOR RESEMBLANCES. 



223 



The Talking Oak. 

But tell me, did she read the name 

I carved with many vows, 
When last with throbbing heart I came 

To rest beneath thy boughs ? 



"And I will work in prose and rhyme, 
And praise thee more in both, 
Than bard has honored beech or lime, 



etc. 



The Little Heracles (Theocr. XXIV., 7-9). 
(Alcmene's Lullaby.) 
1 Sleep ye, my babes, a sweet and healthful sleep ! 
Sleep safe, ye brothers twain that are my life : 
Sleep, happy now, and happy wake at morn." 

" Cradle Song," in The Princess. 
" Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, 
Father will come to thee soon ! 
Rest, rest, on mother's breast, 
Father will come to thee soon ! 

Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep." 



Epitaph of Bion (Mosch., III. 68, 69). 

Thee Cypris holds more dear than that last kiss 
She gave Adonis, as he lay a-dying." 

Tears, Idle Tears. 
"Dear as remembered kisses after death." 



Bion (III. 16). 
Where neither cold of frost, nor sun, ■ doth harm us. 

Morte d' Arthur. 
" Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow." 



224 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



Cp., also, 
Tibul. III. 
4. 31 and 
Catul. 
LXII. 
20-23. 



The Triumph of Daphnis (Theocr., VIII. 90, 91). 
" But as the other pined, and in his heart 
Smouldered with grief, even so a girl betrothed 
Still feels regret." 
("A maid first parting from her home might wear as sad a face." 
— Calverley's Trans/.) 

In Memoriam (XL). 
" When crowned with blessing she doth rise 
To take her latest leave of home, 
And hopes and light regrets that come 
Make April of her tender eyes." 

The Distaff {Theocr., XXVIII. 24, 25). 
" For, seeing thee, one to his friend shall say : 
Lo, what a grace enriches this poor gift ! 
All gifts from friends are ever gifts of worth." 

Elaine. 
" Diamonds for me ! they had been thrice their worth, 
Being your gift, had you not lost your own. 
To loyal hearts the value of all gifts 
Must vary as the giver's." x 

Cyclops (Theocr., XI. 25-29). 
(Love at first sight.) 
" For I have loved you, maiden, since you first, 
A-gathering hyacinths from yonder mount, 
Came with my mother, and I was your guide. 
So, having seen you once, I could not cease 
To love you from that time, nor can I now." 

The Gardener's Daughter. 
"But she, a Rose 
In roses, mingled with her fragrant toil, 



But see, also, Hamlet (III. 1): — 

" And with them, words of so sweet breath composed 
As made the things more rich : their perfume lost, 
Take these again ; for to the noble mind 
Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove unkind." 



MINOR RESEMBLANCES. 



225 



Nor heard us come, nor from her tendance turned 

Into the world without 

So home I went, but could not sleep for joy, 
Reading her perfect features in the gloom. 

Love at first sight, first-born and heir to all, 
Made this night thus." 

There are passages of another class, in Mr. Ten- 
nyson's verse, which bear a common likeness to the 
work of various classical poets, his university studies 
retaining their influence over him through life. In 
some of these, by brief touches, he reproduces the 
whole picture of a Greek idyl : — 

Europa (Mosch., II. 125-130). 
" But she, upon the ox-like back of Zeus 
Sitting, with one hand held the bull's great horn, 
And with the other her garment's purple fold 
Drew upward, that the infinite hoary spray 
Of the salt ocean might not drench it through ; 
The while Europa's mantle by the winds 
Was filled and swollen like a vessel's sail, 
Buoying the maiden onward." 

The Palace of Art. 
" Or sweet Europa's mantle blew unclasped, 
From off her shoulder backward borne : 
From one hand drooped a crocus ; one hand grasped 
The mild bull's golden horn." 

Elsewhere, in the " Europa," the heroine is said to 
"shine most eminent, as the Foam-Born among her 
Graces three." Tennyson's classical feeling is so 
strong, that, in the closing scene of " The Princess," 
at the height of his dramatic passion, he stops to 
draw a picture of Aphrodite coming "from barren 
deeps to conquer all with love," and follows the god- 



Minor re- 
semblances. 



226 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



Similar 
effects of 
rhythm. 



dess even to her Graces, who " decked her out for 
worship without end." Both the ancient and modern 
idyllists are mindful of the second Homeric Hymn 
to Aphrodite ; and the excursus of the latter poet is 
so beautiful that we forgive him for delaying the 
action of his poem. In his other classical allusions 
such phrases as "the cold-crowned snake," "the 
charm of married brows," "softer than sleep," "like 
a dog he hunts in dreams," " thou comest, much 
wept-for ! " and " sneeze out a full God-bless-you right 
and left," repeat not only the language of Theocritus 
and his pupils, but of Homer, Anacreon, and the 
Latin Lucretius and Catullus. 

The lover's song, "It is the Miller's Daughter," is 
an exquisite imitation of the sixteenth ode of Anac- 
reon. Often, however, the Laureate enriches his ro- 
mantic and epic poems with effects borrowed from 
Gothic, mediaeval sources. A reference, for example, 
to the "The'atre Frangais au Moyen Age," printed 
by Monmerque in 1839, will discover the miracle-play 
from which he obtained something more than a hint 
for the isometric burden, — " Too late, too late ! ye 
cannot enter now." 

Alliterations and rhymes within lines, graces of 
^poetry in which Tennyson has excelled English prede- 
cessors, are a continuous excellence of his Syracusan 
teachers. There is a wandering melody, wholly dif- 
ferent from the sounding Homeric rhythm, and impos- 
sible for a translator to reproduce, which the author 
of " The Pri ncess " has approached in such lines as 
these : — ' ~~ 

" O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light." 

" Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine." 



SIMILAR EFFECTS OF RHYTHM. 



227 



"Laborious, orient ivory, sphere in sphere." 

" The lime a summer home of murmurous wings." 

" Ran riot, garlanding the gnarled boughs 
With bunch and berry and flower through and through." 

" The flower of all the west and all the world." 

" And in the meadow tremulous aspen-trees 
And poplars made a noise of falling showers." 

" Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet, 

Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn, 
^ The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 
And murmuring of innumerable bees." 

These effects, which the Laureate employs with such 
variation and continuance that the resultant style is 
known as Tennysonian, were Dorian first of all. 
Whole idyls of Theocritus, composed in the flexible 
bucolic hexameter, are a succession of melodies which 
are simply consonant with the genius of the new Doric 
tongue. The four English verses last cited above are 
curiously imitated from the musical passage in the 
first idyl (Theocr., I. 7, 8). 

" Sweeter thy song, O shepherd, than the sound 
Of yon loud stream, falling adown, adown," 

combined with the alliterative line, which mimics the 
murmuring of bees (Theocr., V. 46), 

&5e Ka\bv (3ofJLJ3evvTi ttotI afjidvecrcn fxeXiaaai. 

It may be said, generally, that our poet imitates the 
Sicilians, and them alone, of all his classical models, 
in the persistent ease with which sound, color, form, 
and meaning are allied in his compositions. False 
notes are never struck, and no discordant hues are 
admitted. 



Dorian 

music. 



228 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



"Cyclops" 
and the 
" Shepherd's 
Idyl." 



V. 

This chapter has extended beyond its proposed 
limits, but, ere dismissing the theme, I will cite two 
more examples in which Mr. Tennyson has very 
closely followed his prototype. The first is that 
" small sweet idyl " in the seventh division of " The 
Princess " ; possibly, so far as objective beauty and 
finish are concerned, the nonpareil of the whole poem. 
It is an imitation of the apostrophe of Polyphemus 
to Galatea, and never were the antique and modern 
feelings more finely contrasted : the one, clear, simple, 
childlike, perfect (in the Greek) as regards melody 
and tone ; the other, nobler, more intellectual, the an- 
tique body with the modern soul. The substitution 
of the mountains for the sea, as the haunt of the 
beloved nymph, is the Laureate's only departure from 
the material employed by Theocritus : — 

Cyclops (Theocr., XI. 42-49, 60-66). 
" Come thou to me, and thou shalt have no worse ; 
Leave the green sea to stretch itself to shore I 
More sweetly shalt thou pass the night with me 
In yonder cave; for laurels cluster there, 
And slender-pointed cypresses ; and there 
Is the dark ivy, the sweet-fruited vine; 
There the cool water, that from shining snows 
Thick-wooded iEtna sends, a draught for gods. 
Who these would barter for the sea and waves? 

There are oak fagots and unceasing fire 

Beneath the ashes 

Now will I learn to swim, that I may see 
What pleasure thus to dwell in water depths 
Thou findestl Nay, but, Galatea, come! 
Come thence, and having come, forget henceforth, 
As I (who tarry here), to seek thy home! 



THE 'SHEPHERD'S IDYL. 



229 



And mayst thou love with me to feed the flocks 
And milk them, and to press the cheese with me, 
Curdling their milk with rennet." 

The Princess (Book VII.). 
" Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height : 
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang), 
In height and cold, the splendor of the hills ? 
But cease, to move so near the heavens, and cease 
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted pine, 
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire ; 
And come, for Love is of the valley, come, 
k For Love is of the valley, come thou down 
And find him ; by the happy threshold he, 
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize, 
Or red with spurted purple of the vats, 
Or fox-like in the vine : . . . . 

. . . . Let the torrent dance thee down 
To find him in the valley ; let the wild 
Lean-headed eagles yelp alone, and leave 
The monstrous ledges there to slope .... 
. . . . but come ; for all the vales 
Await thee ; azure pillars of the hearth 
Arise to thee ; the children call, and I, 
Thy shepherd, pipe, and sweet is every sound." 

The closing example is from " The Thalysia," or 
Harvest-Home, which has furnished Mr. Tennyson 
with the design for portions of " The Gardener's 
Daughter " and " Audley Court." There is no exact 
reproduction, but in outline and spirit the passages 
herewith compared will be seen to resemble each 
other more nearly than others already given, where 
the expressions of the Greek text are repeated in the 
English adaptation : — 

The Thalysia (Theocr., VII. I, 2, 130-147). 
" It was the day when I and Eucritus 

Strolled from the city to the river-side : 

With us a third, Amyntas." 



"The 

Thalysia" 
and its co2in- 
terparts. 



230 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



(After this opening follows a eulogy of the poet's 
friends, Phrasidamus and Antigenes.) 

" He, leftward turning, sauntered on the road 
To Pyxa ; as for Eucritus and me 
With handsome young Amyntas, — having gained 
The house of Phrasidamus, and lain down 
On beds of fragrant rushes and on leaves . 
Fresh from the vines, — we took our fill of joy. 
Poplars and elms were rustling in the wind 
Above us, and a sacred rivulet 
From the Nymphs' cave was murmuring anigh. 
The red cicalas ceaselessly a?nid 
The shady boughs were chirping; from afar 
The tree-frog in the briers chanted shrill ; 
The crest-larks and the thistle-finches sang, 
The turtle-dove was plaining ; tawny bees 
Were hovering round the fountain. All things near 
Smelt of the ripened summer, all things smelt 
Of fruit-time. Pears were rolling at our feet, 
And apples for the taking ; to the ground 
The plum-tree staggered, burdened with its fruit ; 
And we, meanwhile, brushed from a wine-jar's mouth 
The pitch, four years unbroken." 

The Gardener 's Daughter. 
" This morning is the morning of the day 
When I and Eustace from the city went 
To see the Gardener's Daughter : 

(After this opening follows a eulogy of Eustace 
and Juliet.) 

" . . . . All the land in flowery squares, 
Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind, 
Smelt of the coming summer. .... 
. . . . From the woods 
Came voices of the well-contented doves. 
The lark could scarce get out his notes for joy, 
But shook his song together as he neared 



the thalysia: 



231 



" His happy home, the ground. To left and right 
The cuckoo told his name to all the hills; 
The mellow ouzel fluted tn the elm ; 
The red-cap whistled ; and the nightingale 
Sang loud, as though he were the bird of day.'''' 

Audley Court. 
"There, on a slope of orchard, Francis laid 
A damask napkin wrought with horse and hound, 
Brought out a dusky loaf that smelt of home, 
And, half cut down, a pasty costly made, 
Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret, lay 
Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks 
Imbedded and injellied ; last, with these, 
A flask of cider from his father's vats 
Prime, which I knew " 

Each portion of the foregoing English Idyls, so far 
as quoted, is a reminiscence of some portion of the 
"Thalysia" {mutatis mutandis, with regard to theme, 
season, and country), and the general analogy is 
equally spirited and remarkable. As for the two 
lunches, the one is pure Sicilian, of the fruits of the 
orchard and the vine; the other, pure Briton, smack- 
ing of the cook and the larder. Your true English- 
man, while sensible of the beauty of the song of the 
lark, who can " scarce get out his notes for joy," ap- 
preciates him none the less when lying "imbedded 
and injellied " beneath the crust of " a pasty costly 
made." It should be remembered, however, that the 
bird does not appear under these differing conditions 
in the same idyl. 

VI. 

A sufficient number of analogous passages have 
now been cited to illustrate tne homage which the 
Laureate has paid to the example of Theocritus, and 



A close 
analogy. 



232 



TENNYSON AND THEOCRITUS. 



Tennyson 
none the less 
an original 
poet. 



the perfection of that art by which he has wedded 
his master's method to the spirit and resources of 
the English tongue. I have written with genuine rev- 
erence for Tennyson's work, and with a gratitude, felt 
by all who take pleasure in noble verse, for the de- 
light imparted through many years by the successive 
productions of his genius. In study of the Sicilian 
models he has been true to his poetic instinct, and 
fortunate in discernment of the wants of his day and 
generation. Emerson, in an essay on " Imitation and 
Originality," has said : " We expect a great man to be 
a good reader ; or in proportion to the spontaneous 
power should be the assimilating power " ; and again, 
" There are great ways of borrowing. Genius borrows 
nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to 
his authors, Landor replies : ' Yet he was more origi- 
nal than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies 
and brought them to life.' " 

It must be acknowledged that somewhat of this 
applies to Tennyson's variations upon Theocritus. To 
him, also, may be adjudged the credit of being the 
first to catch the manner of the classical idyls and 
reproduce it in modern use and being. Before his 
time Milton and Shelley were the only poets who 
measurably succeeded in this attempt, and neither of 
them repeated it after a single trial. Other reproduc- 
tions of the Greek idyllic form have been by a kind 
of filtration through the Latin medium ; and often, 
by a third remove, after a redistillation of the French 
product. The odious result is visible in the absurd 
pastorals of "standard British poets," from 'Dryden 
himself and Pope, to Browne, Ambrose Philips, Shen- 
stone, and Gay. Their bucolics have made us sicken 
at the very mention of such names as Daphnis and 



Pseudo- 
pastoral 



CLOSE OF THE IDYLLIC PERIOD. 



233 



Corydon, soiled as these are with all ignoble use. Ten- 
nyson revived the true idyllic purpose, adopting the 
form mainly as a structure in which to exhibit, with 
equal naturalness and beauty, the scenery, thought, 
manners, of his own country and time. Assuming 
the title of idyllic poet, he made the term " idyl " 
honored and understood ; but carried his method to 
such perfection, that its cycle seems already near an 
end, and a new generation is calling for work of a 
different order, for more vital passion and dramatic 
power. 



The true 
idyl. 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE GENERAL CHOIR. 



An era 
fairly rep- 
resented by 
its miscella- 
neous poets. 



The early 
situation 
and outlook. 



THE choral leaders are few in number, and it is 
from a blended multitude of voices that we de- 
rive the general tone and volume, at any epoch, of a 
nation's poetic song. The miscellaneous poets, singly 
or in characteristic groups, give us the pervading 
quality of a stated era. Great singers, lifted by 
imagination, make style secondary to thought ; or, 
rather, the thought of each assumes a correlative 
form of expression. Younger or minor contempora- 
ries catch and reflect the fashion of these forms, 
even if they fail to create a soul beneath. It is said 
that very great poets never, through this process, have 
founded schools, their art having been of inimitable 
loftiness or simplicity ; but who of the accepted few, 
during recent years, has thus held the unattainable 
before the vision of the facile English throng? 



At the beginning of the present reign Tennyson 

was slowly obtaining recognition, and his influence 

Accession of [had not yet established the poetic fashion of the 

time. Wordsworth shone by himself, in a serene and 

luminous orbit, at a height reached only after a pro- 



Victoria 
June 20, 
1837. 



EARLY SITUATION AND OUTLOOK. 



235 



longed career. The death of Byron closed a splendid 
but tempestuous era, and was followed by years of 
reaction, — almost of sluggish calm. At least, the 
group of poets was without a leader, and was com- 
posed of men who, with few great names among them, 
utilized their gifts, — each after his own method or 
after one of that master, among men of the previous 
generation, whom he most affected. A kind of in- 
terregnum occurred. Numbers of minor poets and 
scholars survived their former compeers, and wrote 
creditable verse, but produced little that was essen- 
tially new. Motherwell had died, at the early age of 
thirty-eight, having done service in the revival of 
Scottish ballad-minstrelsy : and with the loss of the 
author of that exquisite lyric, " Jeanie Morrison," of 
" The Cavalier's Song," and " The Sword-Chant of 
Thorstein Raudi," there passed away a vigorous and 
sympathetic poet. Southey, Moore, Rogers, Frere, 
Wilson, James Montgomery, Campbell, James and 
Horace Smith, Croly, Joanna Baillie, Bernard Barton, 
Elliott, Cunningham, Tennant, Bowles, Maginn, Pea- 
cock, poor John Clare, the translators Cary and Lock- 
hart, 1 — all these were still alive, but had outlived 
their generation, and, as far as verse was concerned, 



1 Robert Southey, Poet Laureate, 1774- 1843 > Thomas Moore, 
1779- 1852; Samuel Rogers, 1763 -1855; Rt. Hon. John Hook- 
ham Frere, 1769 -1846; John Wilson, 1785 -1854; Rev. James 
Montgomery, 1771 - 1854 ; Thomas Campbell, 1777- 1844; James 
Smith, 1775- 1839; Horace Smith, 1779 -1849; Rev. George 
Croly, 1780- i860; Joanna Baillie, 1762-1851; Bernard Barton, 
1784 -1849; Ebenezer Elliott, 1781 - 1849 ; Allan Cunningham, 
1784- 1842; William Tennant, 1785 -1848; Rev. William Lisle 
Bowles, 1762- 1850; William Maginn. 1793- 1842; Thomas Love 
Peacock, 1785 -1866; John Clare, 1793 -1864; Rev. Henry 
Francis Cary, 1772 -1844; John Gibson Lockhart, 1794- 1854. 



William. 
Words- 
worth, Poet- 
Laureate : 
bom April 

7, 177°; 

died April 
23, 1850. 



William 
Motherwell: 
1797- 1835. 



The retired 
list. 



236 



DA RLE Y. — BEDDOES. — TA YLOR. 



Leigh 

Hunt. See 
-page 103. 

Rev. Henry 
Hart Mil- 
man: 
1791 - 1868. 



Sir Thomas 
Noon Tal- 
fourd: 
1795-1854. 



fames 
Sheridan 
Knowles : 
1784- 1862. 



Mary Rus- 
sell M it- 
ford: 
1786- 1855. 



" Strayed 
fingers." 



George 
Parley : 
1785- 1849. 



were more or less superannuated. What Landor, 
Hood, and Procter were doing has passed already 
under review. Leigh Hunt continued his pleasant 
verse and prose, and did much to popularize the 
canons of art exemplified in the poetry of his former 
song-mates, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Milman ? 
afterward Dean of St. Paul's, a pious and conven- 
tional poet who dated his literary career from the 
success of an early drama, " Fazio," still was writing 
plays that did credit to a churchman and Oxford 
professor. Talfourd's " Ion " and " The Athenian 
Captive " also had made a stage-success : the poets 
had not yet discovered that a stage which the talent 
of Macready exactly fitted, and a histrionic feeling 
of which the plays of Sheridan Knowles had come 
to be the faithful expression, were not stimulating to 
the production of the highest grade of dramatic 
poetry. Various dramas and poems, by that cheery, 
versatile authoress, Miss Mitford, had succeeded her 
tragedies of "Julian" and " Rienzi." It must be 
owned that these three were good names in a day 
of which the fashion has gone by. At this distance 
we see plainly that they were minor poets, or that 
the times were unfriendly to work whose attraction 
should be lasting. Doubtless, were they alive and 
active now, they would contend for favor with many 
whom the present delights to honor. 

Meanwhile a few men of genius, somewhat out of 
place in their generation, had been essaying dramatic 
work for the love of it, but had little ambition or 
continuity, finding themselves so hopelessly astray. 
Darley, after his first effort, " Sylvia," — a crude 
but poetical study in the sweet pastoral manner of 
Jonson and Fletcher, — was silent, except for some 



THE SENTIMENTALISTS. 



237 



occasional song, full of melody and strange purpose- 
lessness. Beddoes, a stronger spirit, author of "The 
Bride's Tragedy " and " Death's Jest-Book," wandered 
off to Germany, and no collection of his wild and 
powerful verse was made until after his decease. 
Taylqr, whose noble intellect and fine constructive 
powers were early affected by the teachings of Words- 
worth, entered a grand protest against the sentimen- 
talism into which the Byronic passion now had de- 
generated. He would, I believe, have done even 
better work, if this very influence of Wordsworth had 
not deadened his genuine dramatic power. He saw 
the current evils, but could not substitute a potential 
excellence or found an original school. As it is, 
" Philip van Artevelde " and " Edwin the Fair " have 
gained a place for him in English literature more 
enduring than the honors awarded to many popular 
authors of his time. 

The sentimental feeling of these years was nurtured 
on the verse of female writers, Mrs. Hemans and 
Miss Landon, whose deaths seemed to have given 
their work, always in demand, a still wider reading. 
It had been fashionable for a throng of humbler 
imitators, including some of gentle blood, to con- 
tribute to the " annuals " and " souvenirs " of Alaric 
Watts, but their summer-time was nearly over and the 
chirping rapidly grew faint. The Hon. Mrs. Norton, 
styled " the Byron of poetesses," was at the height 
of her popularity. A pure religious sentiment in- 
spired the sacred hymns of Keble. Young Hallam 
had died, leaving material for a volume of literary 
remains ; if he did not live to prove himself great, 
his memory was to be the cause of greatness in 
others, and is now as abiding as any fame which 



Thomas 
Lovell Bed- 
does: 1803- 
49. 



Sir Henry 
Taylor : 
1800- 86. 



The senti- 
mentalists. 



The "An- 
nuals." 

A laric 
Alexander 
Watts : 
1799 -1864. 

Caroline 
Elizabeth 
Sarah 
Norton : 
1808- 77. 

Rev. John 

Keble: 
1792- 1S66. 

A rthur 
Henry 
Hallam : 
1811-33 



238 



FORMATION OF A NEW SCHOOL. 



Rev. Rich- 
ard Harris 

Bar ham : 
1788 -1845. 



Winthrop 
Mackivorth 
Praed: 
1802-39. 



A critical 
£, analogy. 



maturity could have brought him. Besides the comic 
verse of Hood, noticed in a previous chapter, other 
jingling trifles, like Barham's Ingoldsby Legends, a cross 
between Hood's whimsicality and that of Peter Pindar, 
were much in vogue, and serve to illustrate the broad 
and very obvious quality of the humor of the day. 
Lastly, Praed, a sprightly and delicate genius, soon to 
die and long to be affectionately lamented, was restor- 
ing the lost art of writing society-verse, and, in a style 
even now modern and attractive, was lightly throw- 
ing off stanzas neater than anything produced since 
the wit of Canning and the fancy of Tommy Moore. 
All this was light enough, and now seems to us to 
have betokened a shabby, profitless condition. From 
it, however, certain elements were gradually to crys- 
tallize and to assume definite purpose and form. The 
influence of Wordsworth began to deepen and widen ; 
and erelong, under the lead of Tennyson, composite 
groups and schools were to arise, having clearer ideas 
of poetry as an art, and adorning with the graces of 
a new culture studies after models derived from the 
choicest poetry of every literature and time. 



II. 

The cyclic aspect of a nation's literary history has 
been so frequently observed that any reference to it 
involves a truism. The analogy between the courses 
through which the art of different countries advances 
and declines is no less thoroughly understood. The 
country whose round of being, in every department 
of effort, is most sharply defined to us, was Ancient 
Greece. The rise, splendor, and final decline of her 
imaginative literature constitute the fullest paradigm 



HISTORICAL ANALOGY. 



239 



of a nation's literary existence and of the supporting 
laws. In the preceding chapter I have enlarged upon 
the active, critical, and learned Alexandrian period, 
which succeeded to the three creative stages of Hel- 
lenic song. I have said that during this epoch the 
Hellenic spirit grew elaborately feeble ; what was 
once so easily creative became impotent, and at last 
entirely died away. Study could not supply the force 
of nature. A formidable circle of acquirements must 
be formed before one could aspire to the title of an 
author. Verbal criticism was introduced ; researches 
were made into the Greek tongue; antique and quaint 
words were sought for by the poets, and, to quote 
again from Schoell, " they sought to hide their defects 
beneath singularity of idea, and novelty and extrava- 
gance of expression ; while the bad taste of some 
displayed itself in their choice of subjects still more 
than in their manner of treating them." 

In modern times, when more events are crowded 
into a decade than formerly occurred in a century, 
and when civilization ripens, mellows, and declines, 
only to repeat the process in successively briefer 
periods, men do not count a decline in national litera- 
ture a symptom that the national glory is approaching 
its end. Still, more than one recurring cycle of Eng- 
lish literature has its analogue in the entire course 
of that of Ancient Greece. And, when we come to 
the issue of supremacy in poetic creation, the ques- 
tion arises whether Great Britain has not recently 
been going through a period similar to the Alexan- 
drian in other respects than the production of a fine 
idyllic poet. It is difficult to estimate our own time, 
so insensibly does the judgment ally itself to the 
graces and culture in vogue. Take up any well- 



See pages 
205, 206. 



Contrast be- 
tivee7t an- 
cient and 
modern lit- 
erary cycles. 



240 



FAMOUS ENGLISH PERIODS. 



Skill and 
refinement 
of the minor 
poets. 



The Geor- 
gian revi- 
val: 1790- 
1824. 



Essay on 
" The Book 
of the 
Poets,"" 
E. B. B. 



edited selection from English minor poetry of the last 
thirty years, and our first thought is, — how full this 
is of poetry, or at least of poetic material ! What 
refined sentiment ! what artistic skill ! what elaborate 
metrical successes ! From beginning to end, how 
very readable, high-toned, close, and subtile in thought ! 
Here and there, also, poems are to be found of the 
veritable cast, — simple, sensuous, passionate ; but 
not so often as to give shape and color to the whole. 
With the same standard in view, one could not cull 
such a garland from the minor poetry of any portion 
of the last century; nor, indeed, from that of any in- 
terval later than the generation after Shakespeare, and 
earlier than the great revival, which numbered Burns, 
Wordsworth, Byron, and Keats among the leaders of 
an awakened chorus of natural English minstrelsy. 

That revival, in its minor and major aspects, was 
truly glorious and inspiring. The poets who sus- 
tained it were led, through the disgust following a 
hundred years of false and flippant art, and by some- 
thing of an intellectual process, to seek again that 
full and limpid fountain of nature to which the Eliza- 
bethan singers resorted intuitively for their draughts. 
But the unconscious vigor of that early period was 
still more brave and immortal than its philosophical 
counterpart in our own century. Ah, those days of 
Elizabeth ! of which Mrs. Browning said, in her exult- 
ant, womanly way, — that "full were they of poets as 

the summer days are of birds Never since the 

first nightingale brake voice in Eden arose such a 
jubilee-concert; never before nor since has such a 
crowd of true poets uttered true poetic speech in one 

day Why, a common man, walking through the 

earth in those days, grew a poet by position." 



THE MEDITATIVE SCHOOL. 



241 



Now, have freshness, synthetical art, and sustained 
imaginative power been the prominent endowments of 
the recent schools of British minor poets? For an 
answer we must give attention to their blended or 
distinctive voices, remembering that certain of the ear- 
liest groups have recruited their numbers, and pro- 
longed their vitality, throughout the middle and even 
the latest divisions of the period under review. 

III. 

The tone of the first of these divisions upon the 
whole was suggested by Wordsworth, while the poetic 
form had not yet lost the Georgian simplicity and 
profuseness. Filtered through the intervening period 
of which we have spoken, its eloquence had grown 
tame, its simplicity somewhat barren and prosaic. 
Still, both tone and form, continuing even to our day, 
are as readily distinguished, by the absence of elabo- 
rate adornment and of curious nicety of thought, from 
those of either the Tennysonian or the very latest 
school, as the water of the Mississippi from that of 
the Missouri for miles below their confluence. The 
poets of the group before us are not inaptly thought 
to constitute the Meditative School, characterized by 
seriousness, reflection, earnestness, and, withal, by re- 
ligious faith, or by impressive conscientious bewilder- 
ment among the weighty problems of modern thought. 

The name of Hartley Coleridge here may be recalled. 
His poetry, slight in force and volume, yet relieved 
by half-tokens of his father's sudden melody and pas- 
sion, is cast in the mould and phrase of his father's 
life-long friend. This mingled quality came by de- 
scent and early association. The younger Coleridge 



A question 
before the 
reader. 



Influence of 
Words- 
worth. 



The Medi- 
tative 
School. 



Rev. Hart- 
ley Cole- 
ridge : 
1796- 1849. 



242 



MITFORD. — TRENCH. — ALFORD. 



Rev. John 
M it ford: 
1811-58. 

Richard 
Chenevix 
Trench. : 
1S07-86. 

Henry 
A' ford: 
1810-71. 



A ubrey 
Thomas de 
Vere : 
1814- 



(whose beautiful child-picture by Wilkie adds a touch- 
ing interest to his memoirs) inherited to the full the 
physical and psychological infirmities of the elder, with 
but a limited portion of that "rapt one's" divine gift. 
The atmosphere of his boyhood was full of learning 
and idealism. He had great accomplishments, and 
had the poetic temperament, with all its weaknesses 
and dangers, yet without a coequal faculty of reflec- 
tion and expression. Hence the inevitable and pa- 
thetic tragedy of a groping, clouded life, sustained 
only by piteous resignation and faith. Several moral- 
istic poets date from this early period, — Mitford, 
Trench, Alford, and others of a like religious mood. 
Archbishop Trench's work is careful and scholarly, 
marked by earnestness, and occasionally rises above 
a didactic level. Dean Alford's consists largely of 
Wordsworthian sonnets, to which add a poem mod- 
elled upon " The Excursion " ; yet he has written a 
few sweet lyrics that may preserve his name. The 
devotional traits of these writers gave some of them 
a wider reading, in England and America, than their 
scanty measure of inspiration really deserved. Grad- 
ually they have fallen out of fashion, and again illus- 
trate the truth that no ethical virtue will compensate 
us in art for dulness, didacticism, want of imaginative 
fire. Aubrey de Vere, a later disciple of the Cumber- 
land school, is of a different type, and has shown ver- 
satility, taste, and a more natural gift of song. This 
gentle poet and scholar, though hampered by too rigid 
adoption of Wordsworth's theory, often has an attrac- 
tive manner of his own. Criticized from the artistic 
point of view, a few studies after the antique seem 
very terse when compared with his other work. A 
late drama, " Alexander the Great," has strength of 



DE VERE. —BURBIDGE. — STERLING. 



243 



language and construction. The earnestness and pu- 
rity of his patriotic and religious verses give them 
exaltation, and, on the whole, the Irish have a right 
to be proud of this most spiritual of their poets, — 
one who, unlike Hartley Coleridge, has improved upon 
an inherited endowment. Returning on our course, 
we see in the verse of Burbidge another reflection of 
Wordsworth, but also something that reminds us of 
the older English poets. As a whole, it is of mid- 
dle quality, but so correct and finished that it is 
no wonder the author never fulfilled the dangerous 
promise of his boyhood. He was a schoolfellow of 
Clough, and I am not aware that he ever published 
any volume subsequent to that by which this note is 
suggested, and which bears the date of 1838. The 
relics of Sterling, the subject of Carlyle's familiar me- 
moir, like those of Hallam, do not of themselves 
exhibit the full ground of the biographer's devotion. 
The two names, nevertheless, have given occasion re- 
spectively for the most characteristic poem and the 
finest prose memorial of recent times. A few of 
Sterling's minor lyrics, such as " Mirabeau," are elo- 
quent, and, while defaced by conceits and prosaic 
expressions, show flashes of imagination which bright- 
en the even twilight of a meditative poet. Between 
the deaths of Sterling and Clough a long interval 
elapsed, yet there is a resemblance between them in 
temperament and mental cast. It may be said of 
Clough, as Carlyle said of Sterling, that he was " a 
remarkable soul, .... who, more than others, sensi- 
ble to its influences, took intensely into him such tint 
and shape of feature as the world had to offer 
there and then ; fashioning himself eagerly by what- 
soever of noble presented itself." It may be said of 



Thomas 
Burbidge ". 
born abcut 
1816. 



John 

Sterling' 

1806-44- 



A rthur 
Hugh 
Clough : 
1819-61. 



244 



ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 



Cp. " Poets 

of Amer- 
ica " : pp. 
339, 34o. 



hexameter 
■poem. 



him, likewise, that in his writings and actions " there 
is for all true hearts, and especially for young noble 
seekers, and striyers towards what is highest, a mirror 
in which some shadow of themselves and of their 
immeasurably complex arena will profitably present 
itself. Here also is one encompassed and struggling 
even as they now are." Clough must have been a 
rare and lovable spirit, else he could never have so 
wrapped himself within the affections of true men. 
Though he did much as a poet, it is doubtful whether 
his genius reached anything like a fair development. 
Intimate as he was with the Tennysons, his style, 
while often reflective, remained essentially his own. 
His fine original nature was never quite subservient 
to passing influences. His free temperament and 
radical way of thought, with a manly disdain of all 
factitious advancement, made him a force even among 
the choice companions attached to his side ; and he 
was valued as much for his character and for what he 
was able to do, as for the things he actually accom- 
plished. There was nothing second-rate in his mould, 
and his Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich, which bears the 
reader along less easily than the billowy hexameters 
of Kingsley, is charmingly faithful to its Highland 
theme, and has a Doric simplicity and strength. His 
shorter pieces are uneven in merit, but all suggestive 
and worth a thinker's attention. If he could have 
remained in the liberal American atmosphere, and 
have been spared his untimely taking-off, he might 
have come to greatness ; but he is now no more, and 
with him departed a radical thinker and a living 
protest against the truckling expedients of the mode. 
The poetry of Lord Houghton is of a modern con- 
templative type, very pure, and often sweetly lyrical. 



\ 



MILNE S. — NE WMA N. — PALGRA VE. 



245 



Emotion and intellect blend harmoniously in his deli- 
cate, suggestive verse, and a few of his songs — 
among which " I wandered by the brookside " at 
once recurs to the memory — have a deserved and 
lasting place in English anthology. This beloved 
writer has kept within his limitations. He has the 
sincere affection of men of letters, who all honor 
his free thought, his catholic taste, and his generous 
devotion to authors and the literary life. To the 
friend and biographer of Keats, the thoughtful patron 
of David Gray, and the progressive enthusiast in 
poetry and art, I venture to pay this cordial tribute, 
knowing that I but feebly repeat the sentiments of a 
multitude of authors on either side of the Atlantic. 

Dr. Newman has lightened the arduous labors and 
controversies of his distinguished career by the com- 
position of many thoughtful hymns, imbued with the 
most devotional spirit of his faith. As representing 
the side of obedience to tradition these Verses of 
Many Years have their significance. At the opposite 
pole of theological feeling, Palgrave, just as earnest 
and sincere, seems to illustrate the Laureate's say- 
ing, — 

" There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds." 

Nevertheless, in " The Reign of Law," one of his 
best and most characteristic pieces, he argues himself 
into a reverential optimism, that seems, just now, to 
be the resting-place of the speculative religious mind. 
He may be said to represent the latest attitude of 
the meditative poets, and in this closely resembles 
Arnold, of whom I have already spoken as the most 
conspicuous and able modern leader of their school. 



Richard 
Monckton 
Milnes : 
1809 - 85 



Rev. John 
Henry 
Newman .' 
1801- 



Francis 
Turner 
Palgrave .* 
1824- 



246 



PL UMPTRE. — MYERS. — HAMERTON. 



Rev. Ed- 
ward Hayes 
Plumptre : 
1821- 



Frederic 
William 
Henry 
Myers : 
1843- 

Philip 
Gilbert 
Hamerton : 
1834- 



Spirit o/the 
contempla- 
tive poets. 
See also pp. 
96-98. 



Indeed, there is scarcely a criticism which I have 
made upon the one that will not apply to the other. 
Palgrave, with less objective taste and rhythmical 
skill than are displayed in Arnold's larger poems, 
is in his lyrics equally searching and philosophical, 
and occasionally shows evidence of a musical and 
more natural ear. The Biblical legends and narrative 
poems of Dr. Plumptre are simple, and somewhat like 
those of the American Willis, but didactic and of a 
kind going out of vogue. His hymns are much bet- 
ter, but it is as a classical translator that we find 
him at his best. Among the later religious poets 
Myers deserves notice for the feeling, careful finish, 
and poetic sentiment of his longer pieces. A few of 
his quatrain-lyrics are exceedingly delicate ; his son- 
nets, more than respectable. From the resemblance 
of the artist Hamerton's descriptive poetry to that of 
Wordsworth, I refer, in this place, to his volume, 
The Isles of Loch Awe, and Other Poems, issued in 
1859. This dainty book, with its author's illustrations, 
is interesting as the production of one who has since 
achieved merited popularity both as an artist and 
prose author, — in either of which capacities he 
probably is more at home than if he had followed 
the art which gave vent to the enthusiasm of his 
younger days. He may, however, be called the tour- 
ist's poet ; his book is an excellent companion to one 
travelling northward ; the poems, though lacking terse- 
ness and force, and written on a too obvious theory, 
are picturesque, and, as the author claimed for them 
in an appendix, "coherent, and easily understood." 

Regarding Palgrave and Arnold, then, as advanced 
members of the contemplative group, I renew the 
question concerning the freshness and creative in- 



DOUBTING HEARTS. 



247 



stinct of this recent school. The unconscious but 
uppermost emotion of both is one of doubt and inde- 
cision : a feeling, I have said, that they were born 
too late. They are awed and despondent before the 
mysteries of life and nature. As to art, their con- 
viction is that somehow the glory and the dream 
have left our bustling generation for a long, long ab- 
sence, and may not come again. Palgrave's " Reign 
of Law," after all, is but making the best of a dark 
matter. It reasons too closely to be highly poetical. 
The doubts and refined melancholy of his other poetry 
reflect the sentiment of the still more subtile Arnold, 
from whose writings many a passage such as this may 
be taken, to show a dissatisfaction with his mission 
and the time : — 

" Who can see the green Earth any more 
As she was by the sources of Time ? 
Who imagine her fields as they lay 
In the sunshine, unworn by the plough ? 
Who thinks as they thought, 
The tribes who then lived on her breast, 
Her vigorous, primitive sons ? 

What Bard, 
At the height of his vision, can dream 
Of God, of the world, of the soul, 
With a plainness as near, 
As flashing as Moses felt, 
When he lay in the night by his flock 
On the starlit Arabian waste ? 
Can rise and obey 
The beck of the Spirit like him ? 

And we say that repose has fled 

Forever the course of the River of Time," etc. 

Great or small, the meditative poets lack that elas- 



Attitude of 
Palgrave 
and A mold. 



248 



A FEW STRONG SINGERS. 



Weakness 
and decline 
of the school. 



A few inde- 

pende7it 

singers. 



Richard 
Hengist 
Horne : 
born 
1802-03, 
died 

tVarch 13, 
1884. 



ticity which is imparted by a true lyrical period, — 
whose very life is gladness, with song and art for an 
undoubting, blithesome expression. The better class, 
thus sadly impressed, and believing it in vain to 
grasp at the skirts of the vanishing Muse, are im- 
pelled to substitute choice simulacra, which culture 
and artifice can produce, for the simplicity, sensuous- 
ness, and passion, declared by Milton to be the ele- 
ments of genuine poetry. They are what training 
has made them. Some of the lesser names were 
cherished by their readers, in a mild and sterile time, 
for their domestic or religious feeling, — very few 
really for their imagination or art. At last even 
sentiment has failed to sustain them, and one by one 
they have been relegated to the ever-increasing col- 
lection of unread and rarely cited " specimen " verse. 



IV. 

So active a literary period could not fail to devel- 
op, among its minor poets, singers of a more fresh 
and genuine order. Here and there one may be dis- 
covered whose voice, however cultivated, has been 
less dependent upon culture, and more upon emotion 
and unstudied art. One of the finest of these, un- 
questionably, is Horne, author of " Cosmo de' Medici," 
"Gregory the Seventh," "The Death of Marlowe," 
and " Orion." I am not sure that in natural gift he 
is inferior to his most famous contemporaries. That 
he here receives brief attention is due to the dispro- 
portion between the sum of his productions and the 
length of his career, — for he still is an occasional 
and eccentric contributor to letters. There is some- 
thing Elizabethan in Home's writings, and no less in 



RICHARD HENGIST HORNE. 



249 



a restless love of adventure, which has borne him 
wandering and fighting around the world, and breaks 
out in the robust and virile, though uneven, character 
of his poems and plays. He has not only, it would 
seem, dreamed of life, but lived it. Taken together, 
his poetry exhibits carelessness, want of tact and wise 
method, but often the highest beauty and power. A 
fine erratic genius, in temperament not unlike Bed- 
does and Landor, he has not properly utilized his 
birthright. His verse is not improved by a certain 
transcendentalism which pervaded the talk and writ- 
ings of a set in which he used to move. Thus 
Orion was written with an allegorical purpose, which 
luckily did not prevent it from being one of the no- 
blest poems of our time ; a complete, vigorous, highly 
imaginative effort in blank-verse, rich with the an- 
tique imagery, yet modern in thought, — and full of 
passages that are not far removed from the majestic 
beauty of "Hyperion." The author's Ballad Romances, 
issued more lately, is not up to the level of his 
younger work. While it seems as if Home's life has 
been unfruitful, and that he failed — through what 
cause I know not — to conceive a definite purpose 
in art, and pursue it to the end, it must be remem- 
bered that a poet is subject to laws over which we 
have no control, and in his external relations is a 
law unto himself. I think we fairly may point to 
this one as another man of genius adversely affected 
by a period not suited to him, and not as one who 
in a dramatic era would be incapable of making any 
larger figure. He was the successor of Darley and 
Beddoes, and the prototype of Browning, but capable 
at his best of more finish and terseness than the last- 
named poet. In most of his productions that have 
11* 



A fine er- 
ratic genhcs. 



His 

" Orion, 

etc. 



Home un- 
suited to his 
period. 



250 



MA CA ULA Y. — A YTOUN. 



Thomas 
Babington 
Macaiday : 
•1800-59. 



William 
Edmond- 
stotme Ay- 
touti: 1813- 
65- 



reached me, amidst much that is strange and gro- 
tesque, I find little that is sentimental or weak. 

Lord Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome was a liter- 
ary surprise, but its poetry is the rhythmical outflow 
of a vigorous and affluent writer, given to splendor 
of diction and imagery in his flowing prose. He 
spoke once in verse, and unexpectedly. His themes 
were legendary, and suited to the author's heroic cast, 
nor was Latinism ever more poetical than under his 
thoroughly sympathetic handling. I am aware that 
the Lays are criticised, as being stilted and false to the 
antique, but to me they have a charm, and to almost 
every healthy young mind are an immediate delight. 
Where in modern ballad-verse will you find more 
ringing stanzas, or more impetuous movement and 
action ? Occasionally we have a noble epithet or 
image. Within his range — little as one who met 
him might have surmised it — Macaulay was a poet, 
and of the kind which Scott would have been first to 
honor. " Horatius " and " Virginius," among the Ro- 
man lays, and that resonant battle-cry of " Ivry," have 
become, it would seem, a lasting portion of English 
verse. In the work of Professor Aytoun, similar in 
kind, but more varied, and upon Scottish themes, we 
also discern what wholesome and noteworthy verse 
may be composed by a man who, if not a poet of 
high rank, is of too honest a breed to resort to un- 
wonted styles, and to measures inconsonant with the 
English tongue. The ballads of both himself and 
Macaulay rank among the worthiest of their class. 
Aytoun's " Execution of Montrose " is a fine produc- 
tion. In " Bothwell," his romantic poem in the metre 
and manner of Scott, he took a subject above his 
powers, which are at their best in the lyric before 



CHARLES KINGS LEY. 



251 



named. Canon Kingsley, as a poet, had a wider 
range. His " Andromeda " is an admirable composi- 
tion, — a poem laden with the Greek sensuousness, 
yet pure as crystal, and the best-sustained example 
of English" hexameters produced up to the date of 
its composition. It is a matter of indifference whether 
the measure bearing that name is akin to the antique 
model, for it became, in the hands of Kingsley, 
Hawtrey, Longfellow, and Howells, an effective form 
of English verse. The author of "Andromeda" re- 
peated the error of ignoring such quantities as do 
obtain in our prosody, and relying upon accent alone ; 
but his fine ear and command of words kept him 
musical, interfluent, swift. In "St. Maura," and the 
drama called "The Saint's Tragedy," the influence 
of Browning is perceptible. Kingsley's true poetic fac- 
ulty is best expressed in various sounding lyrics for 
which he was popularly and justly esteemed. These 
are new, brimful of music, and national to the core. 
" The Sands o' Dee," " The Three Fishers," and " The 
Last Buccaneer " are very beautiful ; not studies, but 
a true expression of the strong and tender English 
heart. 

Here we observe a suggestive fact. With few ex- 
ceptions the freshest and most independent poets of 
the middle division — those who seem to have been 
born and not made — have been, by profession and 
reputation, first, writers of prose ; secondly, poets. 
Their verses appear to me, like their humor, "strength's 
rich superfluity." Look at Macaulay, Aytoun, and 
Arnold, — the first a historian and critic, the others, 
essayists and college professors. Kingsley and Thack- 
eray might have been dramatic poets in a different 
time and country, but accepted the romance and 



Rev. Charles 
Kingsley : 
1819-75. 



English 
hexameter 
verse. 
Cp. " Poets 
of Amer- 
ica" : pp. 
90, 91, and 
pp. 195- 
199. 



Kingsley's 
ballads. 



Fresh and 
genuine poe- 
try by nota- 
ble writers 
of prose. 

Cp. "Poets 
of Amer- 
ica " .* pp. 
462-464. 



252 



THORNBUR Y. — THA CKERA Y 



George 
Walter 
Thorn- 
bury : 

1828-76. 



A true lyri- 
cal poet. 



IV ill i am 
Makepeace 
Thackeray . 
181 1 -63. 



novel as affording the most dramatic methods of 
the day. Thornbury is widely known by his prose 
volumes, but has composed some of the most fiery 
and rhythmical songs in the English tongue. His 
Ballads of the New World are inferior to his Songs 
of the Cavaliers a?id Roundheads, and to his other lyrics 
of war and revolution in Great Britain and France, 
which are full of unstudied lyrical power. Some of 
these remind us of Browning's " Cavalier Tunes " ; 
but Browning may well be proud of the pupil who 
wrote " The Sally from Coventry " and " The Three 
Scars." He is hasty and careless, and sometimes 
coarse and extravagant ; his pieces seem to be struck 
off at a heat, — but what can be better than " The 
Jester's Sermon," "The Old Grenadier's Story," and 
" La Tricoteuse " ? How unique the Jacobite Ballads I 
Read "The White Rose over the Water." "The 
Three Troopers," a ballad of the Protectorate, has a 
clash and clang not often resonant in these piping 
times : — 

" Into the Devil tavern 

Three booted troopers strode, 
From spur to feather spotted and splashed 

With the mud of a winter road. 
In each of their cups they dropped a crust, 

And stared at the guests with a frown ; 
Then drew their swords and roared, for a toast, 

' God send this Crum-well-down ! ' " 

I have a feeling that this author has not been 
fairly appreciated as a ballad-maker. Equally perfect 
of their sort are " The Mahogany-Tree," " The Ballad 



of Bouillabaise," ' 
End of the Play," 
eray, which shall 



The Age of Wisdom," and "The 
— all by the kindly hand of Thack- 
sweep the strings of melody no 



SPONTANEITY. 



253 



more ; yet their author was a satirist and novel-writer, 
never a professed poet. Nor can one read the col- 
lection made, late in life, by Doyle, another Oxford 
professor, of his occasional verse, without thinking 
that "The Return of the Guards," "The Old Cava- 
lier," "The Private of the Buffs," and other soldierly 
ballads are the modest effusions of a natural lyrist, 
who probably has felt no great encouragement to 
perfect a lyrical gift that has been crowded out of 
fashion by the manner of the latter-day school. 

The success of these unpretentious singers again 
illustrates the statement that spontaneity is an essen- 
tial principle of the art. The poet should carol like 
the bird : — 

" He knows not why nor whence he sings, 
Nor whither goes his warbled song ; 
As Joy itself delights in joy, 
His soul finds strength in its employ, 
And grows by utterance strong." 

The songs of minstrels in the early heroic ages dis- 
played the elasticity of national youth. When verses 
were recited, not written, a pseudo-poet must have 
found few listeners. In a more cultivated stage, 
poetry should have all this unconscious freshness, re- 
fined and harmonized with the thought and finish of 
the day. 

V. 

Many of the novelists have written verse, but 
usually, with the foregoing exceptions, by a profes- 
sional effort rather than a born gift. The Bronte 
sisters began as rhymesters, but quickly found their 
true field. Mrs. Craik has composed tender stanzas 



Sir Francis 
Hastings 
Doyle : 
1810- 



Spontaneity 
an essential 
principle of 
lyric art. 
Cp. « Poets 
of Amer- 
ica " : f>p, 
316, 317. 



Inferior 
novelist- 
poets. 

The Bronte 
sisters. 



254 



NO VELIST-POE TS. 



Dinah 
Maria Mu- 
lock Craik: 
1S26- 

Marian 

Evans 

Lewes 

[Mrs. 

Cross) : 

1819-80. 



Edward, 
Lord Lyt- 
ton: 1805- 
73- 



resembling those of Miss Procter, and mostly of a 
grave and pleasing kind. George Eliot's metrical 
work has special interest, coming from a woman ac- 
knowledged to be, in her realistic yet imaginative 
prose, at the head of living female writers. She has 
brought all her energies to bear, first upon the con- 
struction of a drama, which was only a succes d' estime, 
and recently upon a new volume containing "The 
Legend of Jubal " and other poems. The result 
shows plainly that Mrs. Lewes, though possessed of 
great intellect and sensibility, is not, in respect to 
metrical expression, a poet. Nor has she a full con- 
ception of the simple strength and melody of English 
verse, her polysyllabic language, noticeable in the 
moralizing passages of Middlemarch, being very in- 
effective in her poems. That wealth of thought which 
atones for all her deficiencies in prose does not seem 
to be at her command in poetry. The Spanish Gypsy 
reads like a second-rate production of the Byronic 
school. " The Legend of Jubal " and " How Lisa 
loved the King " suffer by comparison with the 
narrative poems, in rhymed pentameter, of Morris, 
Longfellow, or Stoddard. A little poem in blank- 
verse, entitled " O may I join the choir invisible ! " 
and setting forth her conception of the " religion of 
humanity," is worth all the rest of her poetry, for it 
is the outburst of an exalted soul, foregoing personal 
immortality and compensated by a vision of the 
growth and happiness of the human race. 

Bulwer was another novelist-poet, and one of the 
most persistent. During middle age he renewed the 
efforts made in his youth to obtain for his metrical 
writings a recognition always accorded to his ingenious 
and varied prose-romance ; but whatever he did in 



BULWER, AND THE MAGAZINISTS. 



255 



verse was the result of deliberate intellect and culture. 
The fire was not in him, and his measures do not 
give out heat and light. His shorter lyrics never 
have the true ring ; his translations are somewhat 
rough and pedantic ; his satires were often in poor 
taste, and brought him no great profit; his serio 
comic- legendary poem of King Arthur is a monument 
to industry, but never was labor more hopelessly 
thrown away. In dramas like " Richelieu " and 
" Cromwell " he was more successful ; they contain pas- 
sages which are wise, eloquent, and effective, though 
rarely giving out the subtile aroma which comes from 
the essential poetic principle. Yet Bulwer had an 
honest love for the beautiful and sublime, and his 
futile effort to express it was almost pathetic. 

Many of his odes and translations were contributed, 
I think, to Blackwood's magazine. This suggests men- 
tion of the ephemeral groups of lyrists that gathered 
about the serials of his time. Among the Blackwood 
writers, Moir, Aird, — a Scotsman of some imagina- 
tion and fervor, — Simmons, and a few greater or lesser 
lights, are still remembered. Bentley's was the mouth- 
piece of a rollicking set of pedantic and witty rhyme- 
sters, from whose diversions a book of comic ballads 
has been compiled. Eraser's, The Dublin University, 
and other magazines, attracted each its own staff of 
verse-makers, besides receiving the frequent assistance 
of poets of wide repute. I may say that throughout 
the period much creditable verse has been produced by 
studious men who have given poetry the second place 
as a vocation. Among recent productions of this 
class the historical drama of Hannibal, by Professor 
Nichol, of Glasgow, may be taken as a type and a 
fair example. 



The maga~ 
zines and 
their con- 
tributors. 



David Mac- 
beth Moir: 
1798- 1851. 

Thomas 

Aird: 

1802-76. 

B. Sim- 
mons: died 
1850. 



yohn 

Nichol: 

1833- 



256 



WADE. — DOMETT. 



Diffusion of 

inferior 

verse. 



Thomas 
Kibble 
Hervey : 
i799-iS59- 

Martin 
Farqv.har 
Tup per : 
1810- 

Rev. Robert 
Montgom- 
ery : 1807- 
55- 

A few men 
of early 
promise. 

Thomas 

Wade: 

1805-75. 



Alfred 
Domett : 
1811- 

His Black- 
wood lyrics. 



With respect to poetry, as to prose, the coarser and 
less discriminating appetite is the more widely dif- 
fused. Create a popular taste for reading, and an 
inferior article comes to satisfy it, by the law of sup- 
ply and demand. Hence the enormous circulation of 
didactic artificial measures, adjusted to the moral and 
intellectual levels of commonplace, like those of Her- 
vey, Tupper, and Robert Montgomery : while other 
poets of the early and middle divisions, who had 
sparks of genius in them, but who could not adapt 
themselves to either the select or popular markets of 
their time, found the struggle too hard for them, and 
have passed out of general sight and mind. At the 
very beginning of the period Wade gave promise of 
something line. A copy of his Mundi et Cordis lies 
before me, dated 1835. It is marked with the extrava- 
gance and turgidity which soon after broke out among 
the rhapsodists, yet shows plainly the sensitiveness 
and passion of the poet. The contents are in sym- 
pathy with, and like, the early work of Shelley, and 
various poems are of a democratic, liberal stripe, in- 
spired by the struggle then commencing over Europe. 
As long ago as 1837 Domett was contributing lyrics 
to Blackwood which justly won the favor of the burly 
editor. From a young poet who could throw off a 
glee like " Hence, rude Winter, crabbed old fellow ! " 
or " All who 've known each other long," his friends 
had a right to expect a brilliant future. But he was 
an insatiable wanderer, and could "not rest from 
travel." His productions dated from every portion 
of the globe ; finally he disappeared altogether, and 
ceased to be heard from, but his memory was kept 
green by Browning's nervous characterization of him, 
— " What 's become of Waring ? " After three dec- 



SCOTT. — MRS. ADAMS. 



257 



ades the question is answered, and our vagrant bard 
returns from Australia with a long South Sea idyl, 
Ranolf and Amohia, — a poem justly praised by Brown- 
ing for varied beauty and power, but charged with 
the diffuseness, transcendentalism, defects of art and 
action, that were current among Domett's radical breth- 
ren so many years ago. The world has gone by him. 
The lyrics of his youth, and chiefly a beautiful "Christ- 
mas Hymn," are, after all, the best fruits, as they were 
the first, of his long and restless life. But doubtless 
the life itself has been a full compensation. There 
also was Scott, who wrote The Year of the World, a 
poem commended by our Concord Brahmin for its 
faithful utilization of the Hindoo mythology. The 
author, a distinguished painter and critic, is now one 
of the highest authorities upon matters pertaining to 
the arts of design. 1 There were women too : among 
them, Mrs. Adams, author of remembered hymns, 
and of that forgotten drama of Vivia Perfletua, — a 
creature whose beauty and enthusiasm drew around 
her the flower of the liberal party ; the friend of Hunt 
and Carlyle and W. J. Fox, and of Browning in his 
eager youth. Of many such as these, in whom the 
lyrical aspiration was checked by too profuse admix- 
ture with a passion for affairs, for active life, for arts 
of design, or for some ardent cause to which they be- 
came devoted, or who failed, through extreme sensibil- 
ity, to be calm among the turbid elements about them, 
— of such it may be asked, where are they and their 



1 Mr. Scott has now published his miscellaneous ballads, stud- 
ies from «nalure, etc., — many of them written years ago, — in a 
volume to which his own etchings, and those of Alma Tadema, 
give additional beauty. 



Thirty-Jive 
years later. 



William 
Bell Scott i 



Sarah 
Flower 
A dams : 
1805-48. 



258 



LO VER. — ALLINGHAM. 



Poetry a 
■jealous mis- 
tress. Cp. 
" Poets of 
A mer- 
ica " : pp. 
75, 4°9- 



The song- 
writers. 



Samuel 
Lover: 
1797 -181 



William 
Ailing ham . 
1828- 



productions, except in the tender memory and honor 
of their early comrades and friends ? Poetry is a jeal- 
ous mistress : she demands life, worship, tact, the 
devotion of our highest faculties ; and he who refuses 
all of this and more never can be, first, and above 
his other attributes, an eminent or in any sense a 
true and consecrated poet. 



VI. 

We come to a brood of minstrels scattered numer- 
ously as birds over the meadows of England, the rye- 
fields of Scotland, and the green Irish hills. They are 
of a kind which in any active poetic era it is a pleas- 
ure to regard. They make no claims to eminence. 
Their work, however, though it may be faulty and 
uneven, has the charm of freshness, and comes from 
the heart. The common people must have songs ; 
and the children of a generation that had found 
pleasure in the lyrics of Moore and Haynes Bayley 
have not been without their simple warblers. One 
of the most lovable and natural has but lately passed 
away ; Lover, a versatile artist, blitheful humorist and 
poet. In writing of Barry Cornwall I have referred 
to the essential nature of the song, as distinguished 
from that of the lyric, and in Lover's melodies the 
former is to be found. The office of such men is to 
give pleasure in the household, and even if they are 
not long to be held of account (though no one can 
safely predict how this shall be), they gain a prompt 
reward in the affection of their living countrymen. 
We find spontaneity, also, in the rhymes of Ailing- 
ham, whose " Mary Donnelly " and " The Fairies " 
have that intuitive grace called quality, — a grace 



OTHER SONG-WRITERS. 



259 



which no amount of artifice can ever hope to pro- 
duce, and for whose absence mere talent can never 
compensate us. The ballads of Miss Downing, Waller, 
and MacCarthy, all have displayed traces of the same 
charm ; the last-named lyrist, a man of much culture 
and literary ability, has produced still more attractive 
work of another kind. Bennett, within his bounds, is 
a true poet, who not only has composed many lovely 
songs, but has been successful in more thoughtful 
efforts. A few of his poems upon infancy and child- 
hood are sweetly and simply turned. Dr. Mackay, in 
the course of a long and prolific career, has furnished 
many good songs. Some of his studied productions 
have merit, but his proper gift is confined to lyrical 
work. Among the remaining Scottish and English 
song-makers, Eliza Cook, the Howitts, Gilfillan, and 
Swain probably have had the widest recognition; all 
have been simple, and often homely, warblers, having 
their use in fostering the tender piety of household 
life. Miller, a mild and amiable poet, resembling the 
Howitts in his love for nature, wrote correct and 
quiet verse thirty years ago, and was more noticeable 
for his rural and descriptive measures than for a few 
conventional songs. 

It will be observed that, as in earlier years, the 
most characteristic and impressive songs are of Irish 
and Scottish production ; and, indeed, lyrical geniusi 
is a special gift of the warm-hearted, impulsive Celtic 
race. Nations die singing, and Ireland has been a 
land of song, — of melodies suggested by the political 
distress of a beautiful and unfortunate country, by the 
poverty that has enforced emigration and brought 
pathos to every family, and by the traditional loves, 
hates, fears, that are a second nature to the humble 



Mary 

Downing : 
1830- 

John Fran- 
cis Waller: 



Denis 
Florence 
MacCarthy. 
1817-82. 

William 
Cox Ben- 
nett: 1820- 

Charles 
Mackay : 
1814- 

ElizaCook: 
1817- 

William 
Howitt : 
1795-1879. 

Mary How- 
itt : 1798- 

Robert 
Gilfillan : 
1798-1850. 

Charles 
Swain : 
1803-74. 

Thomas 
Miller : 
1809-74. 

Irish and 

Scottish 

songs. 



Patriotic 
ballads. 



26o 



IRISH MINSTRELSY. 



The Dublin 

newspaper 

press. 

Gerald 
Griffin : 
1803 - 40. 

John 
Banim : 
1798- 1842. 

Helen Se- 
lina, Lady 
Dufferin : 
1807-67. 

Thomas 
D'A rcy 
McGee : 
1825-68. 

John Kells 
Ingram : 
1820- 

Thomas 
Davis : 
1814-45. 

Sir Charles 
Gavan 
Duffy: 
1816- 



Keegan : 
1809-49. 

Linton {see 

Chap. 

VIII.). 

Mrs. Varian 
{"Finola"). 

Lady 

Wilde 

(" Speran- 

za"). 

James 
Clarence 
Mangan : 
1803-49. 

Other 

democratic 

rhymesters. 



peasant All Irish art is faulty and irregular, but 
often its faults are endearing, and in its discords 
there is sweet sound. That was a significant chorus 
which broke out during the prosperous times of The 
Nation, thirty years ago, and there was more than 
one tuneful voice among the patriotic contributors to 
the Dublin newspaper press. Griffin and Banim, novel- 
ists and poets, flourished at a somewhat earlier date, 
and did much to revive the Irish poetical spirit. 
Read Banim's " Soggarth Aroon " ; in fact, examine 
the mass of poetry, old and recent, collected in Hayes' 
" Ballads," with all its poverty and riches, and, amid 
a great amount of rubbish, we find many genuine 
folk-songs, brimming with emotion and natural poetic 
fire. Certain ballads of Lady Dufferin, and such a 
lyric as McGee's "Irish Wife," are not speedily for- 
gotten. Among the most prominent of the song- 
makers were the group to which I have referred, — 
Ingram, Davis, Duffy, Keegan, McGee, Linton (the 
English liberal), Mrs. Varian, Lady Wilde, and others, 
not forgetting Mangan, in some respects the most origi- 
nal of all. These political rhymers truthfully repre- 
sented the popular feeling of their own day. Their 
songs and ballads will be the study of some future 
Macaulay, and are of the kind that both makes and 
illustrates national history. Their object was not art ; 
some of their rhymes are poor indeed ; but they fairly 
belong to that class of which Fletcher of Saltoun 
wrote : "If a man were permitted to make all the 
ballads, he need not care who should make the laws 
of a nation." 

Here, too, we may say a word of a contemporary 
tribe of English democratic poets, many of them 
springing from the people, who kept up such an ala- 



CHARTIST VERSE. 



261 



rum during the Chartist agitation. After Thorn, the 
" Inverury poet," who mostly confined himself to dia- 
lect and genre verses, and young Nicoll, who, at the 
beginning of our period strayed from Scotland down 
to Leeds, and poured out stirring liberal lyrics during 
the few months left to him, — after these \^e come to 
the bards of Chartism itself. This movement lasted 
from 1836 to 1850, and had a distinct school of its 
own. There was Cooper, known as " the Chartist 
poet." Linton, afterward to become so eminent as 
an artist and engraver, was equally prolific and more 
poetical, — a born reformer, who relieved his eager 
spirit by incessant poetizing over the pseudonym of 
" Spartacus," and of whom I shall have occasion to 
speak again. Ebenezer Jones was another Chartist 
rhymester, but also composed erotic verse ; a man of 
considerable talent, who died young. These men and 
their associates were greatly in earnest as agitators, 
and often to the injury of their position as artists 
and poets. 



William 
Thorn. : 
1799- 1850. 

Robert 
Nicoll: 
1814-37. 



Chartism. 



Thomas 
Cooper : 
1805- 



" Sparta- 
cus." 

Ebenezer 
Jones : 
1820-60. 



CHAPTER VIII, 



THE SUBJECT CONTINUED. 



Recent 
errors and 
affectations. 



The Rhap- 
sodists ; or 
the ''Spas- 
modic'" 
school. 



" Firmil- 
ian." 



FEW of the minor poets belonging to the middle 
division of our period have been of the healthy 
and independent cast of Kingsley, Thackeray, Thorn- 
bury, or Aytoun. Some have servilely followed the 
vocal leaders, or even imitated one another, — the law 
of imitation involving a lack of judgment, and caus- 
ing them to copy the heresies, rather than the virtues 
of their favorites ; and we are compelled to observe 
the devices by which they have striven, often uncon- 
sciously, to resist adverse influences or to hide the 
poverty of their own invention. 



I. 

The Chartist or radical poets, of whom we have 
just spoken, were the forerunners of a more artistic 
group whose outpourings the wits speedily character- 
ized by the epithet " spasmodic." Their work con- 
stantly affords examples of the knack of substitution. 
Mention of Aytoun reminds us that he did good ser- 
vice, through his racy burlesque, Firmilian, in turning 
the laugh upon the pseudo-earnestness of this rhap- 
sodical school. Its adherents, lacking perception and 
synthesis, and mistaking the materials of poetry for 



THE RHAPSODISTS. 



263 



poetry itself, aimed at the production of quotable 
passages, and crammed their verse with mixed and 
conceited imagery, gushing diction, interjections, and 
that mockery of passion which is but surface-deep. 

Bailey was one of the most notable of this group, 
and from his earliest production may be termed the 
founder of the order. Festus certainly made an im- 
pression upon a host of readers, and is not without 
inchoate elements of power. The poet exhausted 
himself by this one effort, his later productions want- 
ing even the semblance of force which marked it and 
established the new emotional school. The poets that 
took the contagion were mostly very young. Alex- 
ander Smith years afterward seized Bailey's mantle, 
and flaunted it bravely for a while, gaining by A 
Life-Drama as sudden and extensive a reputation as 
that of his master. This poet wrote of 

" A Poem round and perfect as a star," 

but the work from which the line is taken is not of 
that sort. With much impressiveness of imagery and 
extravagant diction that caught the easily, but not 
long, tricked public ear, it was vicious in style, loose 
in thought, and devoid of real vigor or beauty. In 
after years, through honest study, Smith acquired bet- 
ter taste and worked after a more becoming purpose. 
His prose essays were charming, and his City Poems, 
marked by sins of omission only, may be rated as 
negatively good. " Glasgow " and " The Night before 
the Wedding " really -are excellent. The poet became 
a genuine man of letters, but died young, and when 
he was doing his best work. Massey, another emo- 
tional versifier, came on (like Ernest Jones, — who 
went out more speedily) in the wake of the Chartist 



Phiup 

James 
Bailey : 
1816- 



A lexander 
Smith : 
1830-67. 



Gerald 
Massey ; 



264 



BAILEY. —SMITH. — MASSEY. — MACDONALD. 



George 
Macdonald . 
1824- 



David 
Gray. 

1838-61. 



movement, to which its old supporters vainly sought 
to give new life with the hopes aroused by the con- 
tinental revolutions of 1848. He made his sensation 
by cheap rhetoric, and the substitution of sentiment 
for feeling, in an otherwise laudable championship of 
the working-classes from which he sprang. Sympathy 
for his cause gained his social verses a wide hearing; 
but his voice sounds to better advantage in his songs 
of wedded love and other fireside lyrics, which often 
are earnest and sweet. He also has written an un- 
usually good ballad, " Sir Richard Grenville's Last 
Fight." 

The latest of the transcendental poets is Macdon- 
ald, who none the less has great abilities as a preacher 
and novelist, and in various literary efforts has shown 
himself possessed of deep emotion and a fertile, deli- 
cate fancy. Some of his realistic, semi-religious tales 
of Scottish life are admirable. " Light," an ode, is 
imaginative and eloquent, but not well sustained, and 
his poetry too often, when not commonplace, is vague, 
effeminate, or otherwise poor. Is it defective vision, 
or the irresistible tendency of race, that inclines even 
the most imaginative North-Country writers to what is 
termed mysticism? A "Celtic glamour" is veiling the 
muse of Buchanan, — of whom I shall write more fully 
hereafter, — so that she is in danger of confusing her- 
self with the forgotten phantoms of the spasmodic 
school. The touching story and writings of poor 
Gray — who lived just long enough to sing his own 
dirges, and died with all his music in him — reveal 
a sensitive temperament unsustained by co-ordinate 
power. Possibly we should more justly say that his 
powers were undeveloped, for I do not wholly agree 
with those who deny that he had genius, and who 



DAVID GRAY. 



265 



think his work devoid of true promise. The limitless 
conceit involved in his estimate of himself was only 
what is secretly cherished by many a bantling poet, 
who is not driven to confess it by the horror of im- 
pending death. His main performance, " The Luggie," 
shows a poverty due to the want of proper literary 
models in his stinted cottage-home. It is an eigh- 
teenth-century poem, suggested by too close reading 
of Thomson and the like. Education, as compared 
with aspiration, comes slowly to low-born poets. The 
sonnets entitled " In the Shadows," written during the 
gradual progress of Gray's disease, are far more poet- 
ical, because a more genuine expression of feeling. 
They are indeed a painful study. Here is a subjec- 
tive monody, uttered from the depths, but rounded 
off with that artistic instinct which haunts a poet to 
the last. The self pity, struggle, self discipline, and 
final resignation are inexpressibly sorrowful and tragic. 
Gray had the making of a poet in him, and suffered 
all the agonies of an exquisite nature contemplating 
the swift and surely coming doom. 



II. 

After the death of Wordsworth the influence of 
Tennyson and that of Browning had more effect upon 
the abundant offerings of the minor poets. In the 
work of many we discover the elaboration and finesse 
of an art-method superadded by the present Laureate 
to the contemplative philosophy of his predecessor ; 
while not a few, impressed by Browning's dramatic 
studies, assume an abrupt and picturesque manner, 
and hunt for grotesque and mediaeval themes. Often 
the former class substitute a commonplace realism 
12 



Influence of 
Tennyson 
and Brown- 



False sim- 
plicity. 



266 



INFLUENCE OF TENNYSON AND BROWNING. 



Balzac on 
the true mis- 
sion of Art. 

Cp. " Poets 
of Amer- 
ica " / pp. 
367 3 6y. 



Aphorisms 
of William 
Blake. 



Coventry 
Kearsey 
Dighton 
Patmore '. 
1823- 



for the simplicity of Tennyson's English idyls, just 
as the latest aspirants, trying to cope with the Pre- 
Raphaelite leaders, whose work is elevated by genius, 
carry the treatment beyond conscientiousness into 
sectarianism, and divide the surface of Nature from 
her perspective, laying hold upon her body, yet evaded 
by her soul. Balzac makes a teacher say to his pupil: 
" The mission of Art is not to copy Nature, but to 
express her. You are not a vile copyist, but a poet ! 
Take a cast from the hand of your mistress ; place 
it before you ; you will find it a horrible corpse with- 
out any resemblance, and you will be forced to resort 
to the chisel of an artist, who, without exactly copy- 
ing it, will give you its movement and its life. We 
have to seize the spirit, the soul, the expression, of 
beings and things." Many of Blake's aphorisms ex- 
press the same idea. " Practice and opportunity," 
he said, " very soon teach the language of art. Its 
spirit and poetry, centred in the imagination alone, 

never can be taught ; and these make the artist 

Men think they can copy Nature as correctly as I 
copy the imagination. This they will find impossible. 
. . . . Nature and Fancy are two things, and never 
can be joined ; neither ought any one to attempt it, 
for it is idolatry, and destroys the soul." 

Coventry Patmore, not fully comprehending these 
truths, has made verses in which, despite a few 
lovely and attractive passages, the simplicity is af- 
fected and the realism too bald. A carpet-knight in 
poetry, as the younger Trollope latterly is in prose, 
he merely photographs life, and often in its poor and 
commonplace forms. He thus falls short of that aris- 
tocracy of art which by instinct selects an elevated 
theme. It is better to beautify life, though by an 



PA TMORE. — DOB ELL. — L YTTON. 



267 



illusive reflection in a Claude Lorraine mirror, than 
to repeat its every wrinkle in a sixpenny looking- 
glass, after the fashion of such lines as these : — 

" Restless, and sick of long exile 

From those sweet friends, I rode to see 
The church repairs ; and, after a while, 

Waylaying the Dean, was asked to tea. 
They introduced the Cousin Fred 

I 'd heard of, Honor's favorite : grave, 
Dark, handsome, bluff, but gently bred, 

And with an air of the salt wave. 
He stared, and gave his hand, and I 

Stared too," etc. 

This is not the simplicity of Wordsworth in his better 
moods, nor of the true idyllists, nor of him who was 
the simplest of all poets, yet the kingliest in manner 
and theme. 

Sydney Dobell, a man of an eccentric yet very 
poetic disposition, had the faults of both the spas- 
modic and realistic modes, and these were aggravated 
by a desire to maintain a separate position of his 
own. His notes were pitched on a strident key, 
piping shrill and harsh through all the clamor of his 
fellow-bards. " Balder " is the very type of a spas- 
modic drama. " The Roman " is a healthier, though 
earlier, production, at least devoid of egotism and 
gush. His lyrics constantly strive for effect. In 
"How's My Boy?" and "Tommy's Dead," he struck 
pathetic, natural chords, but more often his measures 
and inversions were disagreeably strange, while his 
sentiment was tame and his action slighted. " Owen 
Meredith," — what shall be said of the author of 
" The Wanderer," " Clytemnestra," and " The Apple 
of Life " ? Certainly not that " Chronicles and Char- 



Sydney 
Dobell: 
1824-74. 



Robert, 
Lord Lyt- 
ton: 1831- 



268 



THE TWO BULWERS. 



1 Lucile. 



The two 
Bulwers. 



acters," " Orval," and others of his maturer poems 
are an advance upon these early lyrics which so 
pleased young readers half a generation ago. They 
are not open to criticism that will apply to " The 
Wanderer," etc., but incur the severer charge of dul- 
ness which must preclude them from the welcome 
given to his first books. " Lucile," with all its light- 
ness, remains his best poem, as well as the most 
popular : a really interesting, though sentimental, par- 
lor-novel, written in fluent verse, — a kind of pro- 
duction exactly suited to his gift and limitations. 
It is quite original, for Lytton adds to an inherited 
talent for melodramatic tale-writing a poetical ear, good 
knowledge of effect, and a taste for social excitements. 
His society-poems, with their sensuousness and af- 
fected cynicism, present a later aspect of the quality 
that commended Ernest Maltravers and Pelham to 
the young people of a former day. Some of his 
early lyrics are tender, warm, and beautiful ; but 
more are filled with hot-house passion, — with the ra- 
diance, not of stars, but of chandeliers and gas-lights. 
The Bulwers always have been a puzzle. Their cul- 
tured talent and cleverness in many departments have 
rivalled the genius of other men. We admire their 
glittering and elaborate structures, though aware of 
something hollow or stuccoed in the walls, columns, 
and ceilings, and even suspicious of the floor on 
which we stand. Father and son, — their love of 
letters, determination, indomitable industry, have com- 
manded praise. The son, writing in poetry as nat- 
urally as his father wrote in prose, has the same 
adroitness, the same unbounded ambition, the same 
conscientiousness in labor and lack of it in method. 
In his metaphysical moods we see a reflection of the 



MINOR IDYLLIC SCHOOL. 



269 



clearer Tennysonian thought; and, indeed, while in- 
teresting and amusing us, he always was something 
of an imitator. His lyrics were like Browning's 
dramatic stanzas ; his blank-verse appropriated the 
breaks and cadences of Tennyson, and ventured on 
subjects which the Laureate was long known to have 
in hand. The better passages of " Clytemnestra " 
were taken almost literally from JEschylus. Those 
versed in Oriental poetry have alleged that his wan- 
derings upon its borders are mere forays in " fresh 
woods and pastures new." His voluminous later 
works, in which every style of poetry is essayed, cer- 
tainly have not fulfilled the promise of his youth, 
and those friends are disappointed who once looked 
to him for signs of a new poetical dawn. 

III. 

The merits and weakness of the idyllic method, as 
compared with that of a time when a high lyric or 
epic feeling has prevailed, can best be studied in the 
productions of the Laureate's followers, rather than 
in his own verse ; for the latter, whatever the method, 
would derive from his intellectual genius a glory and 
a charm. The idyl is a picturesque, rather than an 
imaginative, form of art, and calls for no great amount 
of invention or passion. It invariably has the method 
of a busy, anxious age, seeking rest rather than ex- 
citement. Through restrained emotion, music, and 
picturesque simplicity it pleases, but seems to betoken 
absence of creative power. The minor idyllists hunt 
for themes, — they do not write because their themes 
compel them ; they construct poems as still-life artists 
paint their pictures, becoming thorough workmen, but 



Minor idyl- 
lic poets. 



The idyl. 



270 



F. TENNYSON. — WOOLNER. —LINTON. 



Frederick 
Tennyson. 



Charles 
( Tennyson) 
Turner : 
1808-79. 

Edivi7i Ar- 
nold: 1832- 

Roden 
Noel. But 
see Supple- 
ment. 

Tito mas 
Woolner, R. 
A.: 1826- 



William 
jfames 
L inton : 
1812- 
See page 
261. 



at last we yearn for some swift heroic composition 
whose very faults are qualities, and whose inspiration 
fills the maker's soul. 

Frederick Tennyson, for example, treats outdoor 
nature with painstaking and curious discernment, re- 
peating every shadow ; but the result is a pleasantly 
illustrated catalogue of scenic details. It is nature 
refined by a tasteful landscape-gardener. Few late 
poets, however, have shown more elegance in verse- 
structure and rhythm. An artistic motive runs through 
his poems, all of which are carefully finished and not 
marred by the acrobatism of the rhapsodic school. 
Turner, another of the Tennyson brothers, was the 
least modern of them in bis cast. His sonnets do not 
conform to either the Italian or English requirements, 
but have some poetical value. Edwin Arnold's verse 
is that of a scholarly gentleman. The books of Roden 
Noel may pass without comment. My Beautiful Lady, 
by Woolner, is a true product of the art-school, with 
just that tinge of gentle affectation which the name 
implies. It has a distinct motive, — to commemorate 
the growth, maintenance, and final strengthening by 
death, of a pure and sacred love, and is a votive 
tribute to its theme : a delicate volume of such verse 
as could have been produced in no other time. Lin- 
ton's Cla?-ibel and Other Poems, 1865, distinctly belongs 
to the same school, and is noteworthy as an early 
specimen of a method frequently imitated by the latest 
poets. At the date of its appearance this pretty vol- 
ume was almost unique, — the twofold work of the 
author, as artist and poet, and dedicated to William 
Bell Scott, a man of sympathetic views and associa- 
tions. We have seen that Linton's early writings were * 
devoted to liberal and radical propagandism. The 



WESTWOOD. — MEREDITH. — ASHE. 



2/r 



volume before me is a collection of more finished 
poetry, imbued with an artistic purpose, and with 
beauty of execution and design. Few men have so 
much individuality as its author, or are more versatile 
in acquirements and adventure. He is a famous en- 
graver, and his work as a draughtsman and painter 
is full of meaning. These gifts are used to heighten 
the effect of his songs ; fanciful and poetical designs 
are scattered along the pages of this book ; nor can 
it be said that such aids are meretricious, in these 
latter days, when poetry is addressed not only to the 
ear 'but also to the eye. Some of the verse requires 
no pictures to sustain it. A "Threnody" in memory 
of Albert Darasz is an addition to the few good and 
imaginative English elegiac poems; and it may be 
said of whatever Linton does, that, if sometimes ec- 
centric, it shows a decisive purpose and a love of art 
for its own sake. Westwood's "The Quest of the Sanc- 
greall" marks him for one of Tennyson's pupils. His 
minor lyrics are more pleasing. All these poets turn 
at will from one method to another, and may be 
classed as of the composite school. Meredith's verse 
is a further illustration ; he is dramatic and realistic, 
but occasionally ventures upon a classical or romantic 
study. He often fails of his purpose, though usually 
having one. The Poems of the English Roadside seem 
■to me his most original work, and of them "Juggling 
Jerry" is the best. Ashe is one of those minor 
poets who catch and reflect the prevailing mode : he 
belongs to the chorus, atnd is not an independent 
singer. His Poems, 1859, are mildly classical and 
idyllic; but in 1867 he gave us The Sorrows of Hyp- 
sipyle, — after Atalanta in Calydon had revived an in- 
terest in dramatic poetry modelled upon the antique. 



Thomas 

West-wood'. 

1814- 



George 
Meredith . 



Thomas 
Ashe: 1836- 



272 



VERS DE SOCIETE. 



Vers de 
societe, 



including 
satire, par- 
ody, etc. 
CJ>. "Poets 
of Amer- 
ica " : pp. 
284, 285, 



Rev. 
Francis 
Mahoney .' 
1S05-66. 



Qualities 0/ 
pood society- 
verse. 



IV. 

Of those patrician rhymes which, for want of au 
English equivalent, are termed vers de societe, the gentle 
Praed, who died at the commencement of the period, 
was an elegant composer. In verse under this head 
may also be included, for the occasion, epigrammatic 
couplets, witty and satirical songs, and all that metrical 
badinage which is to other poetry what the feuilleton 
is to prose. During the first half of our retrospect it 
was practised chiefly by scholarly and fluent wits. In 
the form of satire and parody it was cleverly employed, 
we have seen, by Aytoun, in his " spasmodic tragedy " 
of " Firmilian"; merrily, too, by Aytoun and Martin 
in the Bon Gualtier ballads ; by Thackeray in " Love- 
Songs made Easy," "Lyra Hibernica," the ballads of 
" Pleaceman X.," etc. ; by Hood in an interminable 
string of mirth and nonsense ■ and with mock-heroic 
scholarship by the undaunted Irish wit, poet, and Lat- 
inist, " Father Prout," and the whole jovial cohort 
that succeeded to the foregoing worthies in the pages 
of the monthly magazines. But with the restrained 
manners of the present time, and the finish to which 
everything is subjected, we have a revival of the more 
select order of society-verse. This is marked by an 
indefinable aroma which elevates it to the region of 
poetic art, and owing to which, as to the imperishable 
essence of a subtile perfume, the lightest ballads of 
Suckling and Waller are current to this day. In fine, 
true vers de societe is marked by humor, by spontane- 
ity, joined with extreme elegance of finish, by the 
quality we call breeding, — above all, by lightness oj 
touch. Its composer holds a place in the Parnassian 
hemicycle as legitimate as that of Robin Goodfellow 



MA HONE Y. —LOCKER. — CAL VERLE Y. — DOB SON. 



273 



in Oberon's court. The dainty lyrics of Locker not 
unfrequently display these characteristics : he is not 
strikingly original, but at times reminds us of Praed 
or of Thackeray, and again, in such verses as " To 
my Grandmother," of an American, — Dr. Holmes. 
But his verse is light, sweet, graceful, gayly wise, and 
sometimes pathetic. Calverley and Dobson are the 
best of the new farceurs. Fly-Leaves, by the former, 
contains several burlesques and serio-comic transla- 
tions that are excellent in their way, with most agree- 
able qualities of fancy and thought. Dobson's Vign- 
ettes in Rhyme has one or two lyrics, besides lighter 
pieces equal to the best of Calverley's, which show 
their author to be not only a gentleman and a scholar, 
but a most graceful poet, — titles that used to be 
associated in the thought of courtly and debonair 
wits. Such a poet, to hold the hearts he has won, 
not only must maintain his quality, but strive to vary 
his style ; because, while there is no work, brightly and 
originally done, which secures a welcome so instant as 
that accorded to his charming verse, there is none to 
which the public ear becomes so quickly wonted, and 
none from which the world so lightly turns upon the 
arrival of a new favorite with a different note. 

Society-verse, then, has been another symptom of 
cultured and refined periods, — of the times of Horace, 
Catullus, Theocritus, Waller, Pope, Voltaire, Tenny- 
son, and Thackeray. The intense mental activity of 
our own era is still more clearly evinced by the 
great number of recent English versions of the poetic 
masterpieces of other tongues. Oxford and Cam- 
bridge have filled Great Britain with scholars, some 
of whom, acquiring rhythmical aptness, have produced 
12* R 



Frederick 
Locker- 
Lampson : 
1821- 



Charles 
Stziart 
Calverley ." 
1831-84. 



Austin Dob- 



[840- 



Other tokens 
of a refined 
and schol- 
arly period. 



Recent 
translators, 
and the new 
theory of 
translation. 



274 



THE TRANSLATORS. 



Sir John 
Boiuring : 
1792 -1872. 



The elder 
Lytto?i. 



Sir Theo- 
dore Mar- 
tin: 1816- 
See p. 272. 

Horace, 
Homer, and 
their trans- 
lators. 



good work of tins kind. Modern translations differ 
noticeably, in their scholastic accuracy, from those of 
earlier date, — among which Chapman's are the no- 
blest, Pope's the freest, and those by Hunt, Shelley, 
and Frere scarcely inferior to the best. The theory 
of translation has undergone a change ; the old idea 
having been that as long as the spirit of a foreign au- 
thor was reproduced an exact rendering need not be 
attempted. But to how few it is given to catch that 
spirit, and hence what wretched versions have ap- 
peared from time to time ! Only natural poets worked 
successfully upon the earlier plan. The modern 
school possibly go too near the extreme of conscien- 
tiousness, yet a few have found the art of seizing 
upon both the spirit and the text. The amount pro- 
duced* is amazing, and has given the public access, in 
our own language, to the choicest treasures of almost 
every foreign literature, be it old or new. 

In the earlier division, Bowring was the most pro- 
lific, and he has also published several volumes of a 
very recent date. His excursions into the fields of 
continental literature have had most importance ; but 
his versions, however valuable in the absence of bet- 
ter, rarely display any poetic fire. The elder Lytton 
was a fair type of the elegant Latinists and minor 
translators belonging to the earlier school. His best 
performance was a recent version of Horace, in me- 
tres resembling, but not copied from, the original, — 
a translation more faithful than Martin's paraphrases, 
but not approaching the latter in elegance. Martin's 
Horace has the flavor and polish of Tennyson, and 
plainly is modelled upon the Laureate's verse. Of all 
classical authors Horace is the Briton's favorite. The 
statement of Bulwer's preface is under the truth when 



THE TRANSLATORS. 



275 



it says: "Paraphrases and translations are still more 
numerous than editions and commentaries. There is 
scarcely a man of letters who has not at one time or 
other versified or imitated some of the odes ; and 
scarcely a year passes without a new translation of 
them all." Upon Homer, also, the poetic scholars 
have expended immense energy, and various theories 
as to the proper form of measure have given birth to 
several noble versions, — distinguished from a multi- 
tude of no worth. Those of Wright, Worsley, Pro- 
fessor Newman, Professor Blackie, and Lord Derby 
may be pronounced the best ; though admirable bits 
have been done by Arnold, Dr. Hawtrey, and the 
Laureate. I do not, however, hesitate to say — and 
believe that few will deny — that the ideal translation 
of Homer, marked by swiftness, simplicity, and gran- 
deur, has yet to be made ; nor do I doubt that it 
ultimately will be, having already stated that our 
Saxon-Norman language is finely adapted to repro- 
duce the strength and sweetness of the early Ionic 
Greek. Professor Conington's Virgil, in the measure 
of " Marmion," was no advance, all things considered, 
upon Dryden's, nor equal to that of the American, 
Cranch. Some of the best modern translations have 
been made by women, who, following Mrs. Browning, 
mostly affect the Greek. Miss Swan wick and Mrs. 
Webster, among others, nearly maintain the standard 
of their inspired exemplar. M. P. Fitz-Gerald's ver- 
sions of Euripides, and of the pastoral and lyric Greek 
poets, may be taken as specimens of the general ex- 
cellence now attained, and I will not omit mention 
of Calverley's complete rendition of Theocritus, — 
undoubtedly as good as can be made by one who 
fears to undertake the original metres. Among me- 



Ichabod 
Charles 
Wright: 

1795-1871. 

Philip 
Stanhope 
IV or s ley : 
died 1 866. 

Francis 
William 
Nezumau '. 
1805- 

John Stuart 
Blackie : 
1809- 

Edward, 
Lord 
Derby : 
1799- 1869. 

Rev. 

Edward 
Craven 
Hawtrey : 
1789- 1862. 
See page 251. 

John Con- 
ington : 
1825-69. 



Anna 
Swanwick. 

Augusta 
Webster. 

Ma7irice 
Purcell 
Fitz- Gerald 



Calverley 
Seepage 273. 



276 



THE TRANSLATORS. 



Rossetti and 
Morris. 
See Chap. X. 

MacCarthy. 
Seepage 259. 



Edward 
FitzGer- 
ald: 1808 ■ 
83. 



See Chap. 
VI., page 
205. 



diasval and modern writers Dante and Goethe have 
received the most attention; but Longfellow and Tay- 
lor, in their translations of the Divine Comedy and 
of Faust, — and Bryant in his stately version of the 
Iliad and the Odyssey, — bear off the palm for Amer- 
ica in reproduction of the Greek, Italian, and Ger- 
man poems. Of Rossettrs exquisite presentation of 
the Early Italian Poets, and Morris's Icelandic re- 
searches, I shall speak elsewhere, and can only make 
a passing reference to MacCarthy's extended and beau- 
tiful selections from Calderon, rendered into English 
asonante verse. Martin has made translations from 
the Danish, and, together with Aytoun, of the bal- 
lads of Goethe. Of modern Oriental explorations, 
altogether the best is a version of the grave and 
imaginative Rubdiydt of Omar Khayyam, by E. Fitz- 
Gerald, who has made other successful translations 
from the Persian, as well as from the Spanish and 
the Attic Greek. 

The foregoing are but a few of the host of transla- 
tors ; but their labors fairly represent the richness 
and excellence of this kind of work in our time, 
and are cited as further illustrations of the critical 
spirit of an age in which it would almost seem as if 
the home-field were exhausted, such researches are 
made into the literature of foreign tongues. I again 
use the language of those who describe the Alexan- 
drian period of Greek song : men " of tact and 
scholarship greatly abound," and by elegant studies 
endeavor to supply the force of nature. Early and 
strictly non-creative periods of English literature have 
been similarly characterized, — notably the century 
which included Pitt, Rowe, Cooke, West, and Fawkes 
.among its scholars and poets. 



HYMNOLOGY. 



277 



In glancing at the lyrical poetry of the era, its 
hymnology should not be overlooked. Religious verse 
is one of the most genuine forms of song, inspired 
by the loftiest emotion, and rehearsed wherever the 
instinct of worship takes outward form. Written for 
music, it is lyrical in the original sense, and repre- 
sentative, even more than the domestic folk-songs, 
of our common life and aspiration. We are not sur- 
prised to find the work of recent British hymn-writers 
displaying the chief qualities of contemporary secular 
poetry, to wit, finish, tender beauty of sentiment and 
expression, metrical variety, and often culture of a 
high grade. What their measures lack is the lyrical 
fire, vigor, and passionate devotion of the earlier 
time. Within their province they reflect the method 
of Tennyson, and — with all their polish and subtilty 
of thought — write devotional verse that is somewhat 
tame beside the fervid strains of Watts, at his best, 
and the beautiful lyrics of the younger Wesley. In 
place of strength, exaltation, religious ecstasy, we 
have elaborate sweetness, refinement, emotional re- 
pose. Many hymn-writers of the transition period 
have held over to a recent time, such as James 
Montgomery, Keble, Lyte, Edmeston, Bowring, Mil- 
man, and Moir, and the stanzas of the first-named 
two have become an essential portion of English 
hymnody. The best results accomplished by recent 
devotional poets — and this also is an outgrowth of 
the new culture — have been the profuse and admi- 
rable translations of the ancient and mediaeval Latin 
hymns by the English divines, Chandler, Neale, and 
Caswall, — the last-named being the deftest workman 
of the three, although the others may be credited with 
equal poetic glow. Among die most successful origi- 



Recent hym- 
nology : 



Its charac- 
teristics. 



The early 

and later 
composers of 
sacred verse. 

Watts and 
C. Wesley. 

Montgom- 
ery, Keble, 
and others. 

The trans- 
lators : 

Rev. John 
Chandler 
(Church of 
England): 
1806-76. 

Rev. John 
Mason 
Neale (Ritu- 
alist): 1818- 
66. 

Rev. 

Edward 
Caswall 
(Church of 
Rome) : 
1814-78. 

Original 
composers : 



278 



DIALECT VERSE. 



Rev. Hora- 
tius Bonar : 
1808- (Scot- 
tishChurch.) 
Rev. Fred- 
erick W. Fa- 
der: 1814-63 
(Church of 
Rome.) 
Mrs. Adams. 
(Unitarian.) 
Seepage 257. 
Charlotte 
Elliott: 
1789-1871. 
Rev. Christo- 
pher Words- 
worth : 
1807-85. 
Rev. A rthur 
Penrhyn 
Stanley: 
1815-81. 
Rev. Sabine 
Bari?ig- 
Gould: 
1834- 
Rev. Ed- 
ward Henry 
Bickersteth : 
1825- 
Hymns 
from the 
German, 
and tlieir 
translators. 
Catherine 
Winkworth: 
1829-78. 
Frances 
Elizabeth ' 
Cox. 

Jane Both- 
iuick: 18 13- 
Mrs. Eric 
Bothwick 
Findlaler. 
Richard 
Massie : 
iSoo- 



nal composers Dr. Bonar should be mentioned, 
many of whose hymns are so widely and favorably 
known ; Faber, also, is one of the best and most 
prolific of this class of poets, notable for the sweet- 
ness and beauty of his sacred lyrics. Others, such 
as Dr. Newman, Dean Trench, Dean Alford, Pal- 
grave, and Mrs. Adams, have been named elsewhere. 
I will barely refer, among a host of lesser note, to 
Miss Elliott, that pure and inspired sibyl, to Dr. 
Wordsworth, Dean Stanley, and Baring-Gould. Bick- 
ersteth, whose longest poem, like the writings of 
Tupper, has had a circulation strictly owing to its 
theme and in inverse proportion to its poetic merits, 
has composed a few hymns that have passed into 
favor. Excellent service also has been rendered by 
those who work the German field, and it is notice- 
able that, while the strongest versions from the Lat- 
in have been made by the divines before named, 
the most successful Germanic translators have been 
women. Among them, Miss Winkworth, who in 1855 
and 1858 published the two series of the Lyra Ger- 
manica ; Miss Cox, editor of Sacred Hymns from the 
German, 1841 ; and the Bothwick sisters, whose Hymns 
from the Land of Luther appeared in several series, 
from 1854 to 1862. Massie, translator of Luther's 
Spiritual Songs, 1854, has been the chief competitor 
of these skilful and enthusiastic devotees. With re- 
spect to English hymnody, I may add that probably 
there never was another period when the sacred 
lyrics of all ages were so carefully edited, brought 
together, and arranged for the use and enjoyment of 
the religious world. 

The success of the dialect-poets is a special mark 



SHAIRP. — WA UGH. — BARNES. 



279 



of an idyllic period. The novel and pleasing effect 
of the more musical dialects often has been used to 
give an interest to mediocre verse ; and close atten- 
tion is required to discriminate between the true and 
the false pretensions of lyrics composed in the Scotch, 
that liquid Doric, or even in the rougher phrases of 
Lancashire, Dorsetshire, and other counties of Eng- 
land. Several Scottish bards, of more or less merit, 
— Thorn, Ballantine, Maclagan, Janet Hamilton, — fig- 
ure in the period. Professor Shairp's highland and 
border lyrics, faithful enough and painstaking, scarcely 
could be ranked with natural song. In England, 
Lancashire maintains her old reputation for the num- 
ber and sweetness of her provincial songs and ballads. 
Waugh is by far the best of her recent dialect-poets. 
To say nothing of many other little garlands of poesy 
which have their origin in his knowledge of humble 
life in that district, the Lancashire Songs have gained 
a wide reception by pleasing, truthful studies of 
their dialect and themes. Barnes, an idyllic and 
learned philologist, has done even better work in his 
bucolic poems of Dorsetshire, and his Poems of Rural 
Life (in common English) are very attractive. The 
minor dialect-verses of England, such as the street- 
ballads and the sea-songs of many a would-be Dibdin, 
are unimportant and beyond our present view. 



V. 

Leaving the specialists, it is observable that the 
voices of the female poets, if not the best-trained, cer- 
tainly are as natural and independent as any. Their 
utterance is less finished, but also shows less of Tenny- 
son's influence, and seems to express a truly feminine 



Dialect- 
verse. 

Cp. " Poets 
of Amer- 
ica " : p. 
455- 

Thom. See 
page 261. 

James 
Ballantine : 
1808-77. 
A lexander 
Maclagan : 
1811-79. 
Janet Ham- 
ilton: 1795- 
1873. 

John Camp* 
bell S/iairp : 
1819-85. 
Edwin 
Waugh : 



Rev. 

William 
Barnes : 
1801-86. 



Female 
poets. 



280 



JEAN INGELOW. — CHRISTINA ROSSETTI. 



Jean Inge- 
low. 1830- 



A delaide 
A nne Proc- 
ter: 1825- 
64. See 

■page 107. 



Isa Craig 
Knox : 
1831- 

Christina 
Georgina 
Rossetti : 
1830- 



emotion and to come from the heart. As the voice 
of Mrs. Browning grew silent, the songs of Miss Inge- 
low began, and had instant and merited popularity. 
They sprung up suddenly and tunefully as skylarks 
from the daisy-spangled, hawthorn-bordered meadows 
of old England, with a blitheness long unknown, and 
in their idyllic underflights moved with the tenderest 
currents of human life. Miss Ingelow may be termed 
an idyllic lyrist, her lyrical pieces having always much 
idyllic beauty, and being more original than her recent 
ambitious efforts in blank-verse. Her faults are those 
common to her sex, — too rapid composition, and a 
diffuseness that already has lessened her reputation. 
But " The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire " 
(with its quaint and true sixteenth-century dialect), 
" Winstanley," " Songs of Seven," and " The Long 
White Seam," are lyrical treasures, and their author 
especially may be said to evince that sincerity which 
is poetry's most enduring warrant. The gentle stanzas 
of Miss Procter also are spontaneous, as far as they 
go, but have had less significance as part of the litera- 
ture of the time. Yet it is like telling one's beads, 
or reading a prayer-book, to turn over her pages, — 
so beautiful, so pure and unselfish a spirit of faith, 
hope, and charity pervades and hallows them. These 
women, with their melodious voices, spotless hearts, 
and holy aspirations, are priestesses of the oracle. 
Their ministry is sacred ; in their presence the most 
irreverent become subdued. I do not find in the 
lyrics of Mrs. Knox, the Scottish poetess, anything 
better than the ode in honor of Burns, which took the 
centenary prize. Miss Rossetti demands closer atten- 
tion. She is a woman of genius, whose songs, hymns, 
ballads, and various lyrical pieces are studied and 



NEO-ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 



281 



original. I do not greatly admire her longer poems, 
which are more fantastic than imaginative j but else- 
where she is a poet of a profound and serious cast, 
whose lips part with the breathing of a fervid spirit 
within. She has no lack of matter to express ; it is 
that expression wherein others are so fluent and adroit 
which fails to serve her purpose quickly ; but when, 
at last, she beats her music out, it has mysterious and 
soul-felt meaning. Another woman-poet is Mrs. Web- 
ster, already mentioned as a translator. For many 
poetic qualities this lady's work is nearly equal, in 
several departments of verse, to that of the best of 
her sister artists ; and I am not sure but her general 
level is above them all. She has a dramatic faculty 
unusual with women, a versatile range, and much 
penetration of thought ; is objective in her dramatic 
scenes and longer idyls, which are thinner than Brown- 
ing's, but less rugged and obscure ; shows great 
culture, and is remarkably free from the tricks and 
dangerous mannerism of recent verse. 



VI. 

The minor poetry of the last few years is of a 
strangely composite order, vacillating between the art 
of Tennyson and the grotesqueness of Browning, while 
the latest of all illustrates, in rhythmical quality, the 
powerful effect Swinburne's manner already has had 
upon the poetic ear. We can see that the long-unpop- 
ular Browning at length has become a potent force 
as the pioneer of a half-dramatic, half-psychological 
method, whose adherents seek a change from the idyl- 
tic repose of the Laureate and his followers. With 
this intent, and with a strong leaning toward the art- 



Augusta 
Webster : 
born about 
1840- 



The latest 
schools. 



Psycholngi 
calandNe9- 
Roma?itic 
poets. 



282 



E VANS. — SIMCOX. — MARSTON. — HAKE. 



Sebastian 

Evans : 



George Au- 
gustus Sim- 
cox : 1841- 
Westland 
Marsto7i : 
18 19- 
Philip 
Bourke 
Marston : 
1850-87. 



Thomas 
Gordon 
Hake, 
M. D. : 
1809- 



studies and convictions of the Rossetti group, a Neo~ 
Romantic School has arisen, and many of the prom- 
ising younger aspirants are upon its roll. 

Among recent volumes decidedly in the manner of 
Browning may be mentioned Brother Fabian's Manu- 
script ; and Other Poems, by Evans. On the other 
side, Simcox's Poems and Romances are elaborate and 
curious romantic studies, resembling works of this sort 
by Morris and Rossetti. P. B. Marston inherits a 
poetic gift from his father (Dr. Westland Marston, au- 
thor of " The Patrician's Daughter " and many other 
plays). The son is of the new school. I do not 
remember any experimental volume that has shown 
more artistic perfection than his Song-Tide and Other 
Poems. His sonnets and lyrics approach those of 
Rossetti in terseness and beauty, and, while he pos- 
sesses more restraint than others of his group, there 
is extreme feeling, pathetic yearning, and that self- 
pity which is consolation, in his sonnets of a love 
that has been, and is gone, — of "the joy that was, is 
not, and cannot be." It is said that Marston is 
blind, but not from birth; and certainly his imagina- 
tion finely supplies the want of outward vision in 
these picturesque and deeply emotional poems. 

Sometimes, in a garden that has changed owners 
and has been replanted with exotics of brilliant and 
various hues, the visitor is struck with surprise to see 
a sweet and sturdy native flower sprung up of itself, 
amid the new-fangled exuberance, from seed dropped 
in a season long gone by. It is with a kindred 
feeling that we examine Dr. Hake's volume, Made- 
line, and Other Poems and Parables, so strangely and 
pleasantly different from the contemporary mode. It 
is filled with quaint, grave, thoughtful measures, that 



WARREN. — PA YNE. 



283 



remind us, by their devotion, of Herbert or Vaughan, 
— by their radical insight, of the plain-spoken hom- 
ilies of a time when England's clergymen believed 
what they preached, — and, by their emblematic and 
symbolic imagery, of Francis Quarles. " Old Souls," 
" The Lily of the Valley," and other parables, are 
well worth close reading, and possibly are the 
selectest portion of this very original writer's verse. 
Warren's Philoctetes, an antique drama, is a good ex- 
ample of the excellence attained in this kind of work 
by the new men. It is close, compact, Grecian, less 
rich with poetry and music than " Atalanta," but even 
more statuesque and severe. This poet is of the 
most cultured type. His Rehearsals is a collection 
of verses that generally show the influence of Swin- 
burne, but include a few psychological studies in a 
widely different vein. He is less florid and ornate 
than his favorite master ; all of his work is highly 
finished, and much of it very effective. Among his 
other successes must be reckoned an admirable use 
of the stately Persian quatrain. Payne is a more 
open and pronounced disciple of the Neo-Romantic 
school. His first book, The Masque of Shadows, is a 
collection of mystical " romaunts," containing much J 
old-fashioned diction, in form reminding us of Morris's ^ 
octo-syllabic measures, but pervaded by an allegorical 
spirit. In his Intaglios we have a series of sonnets 
inscribed, like those of Rossetti, to their common 
master, Dante. Finally, the volume entitled Songs of 
Life and Death shows the influence of Swinburne, so 
that his works, if brought together, would present a 
curious mixture and reflection of styles. Neverthe- 
less, this young poet has fire, imagination, and other 
inborn qualities, and should be entirely competent 



John 
Leicester 
Warren ' 
1835- 



John Payne'- 
1842- 



284 



O'SHA UGHNESSY. —MARZIALS. 



A rthur 
W. E. 
O'Shattgh- 
nessy : 
1844-8' 



The new 
method car- 
ried to an 
extreme. 

Theophile 
Marzials : 
^850- 



to achieve distinction in a manner plainly original. 
His friend O'Shaughnessy, another man who appears 
to have the natural faculty, is moving on a parallel 
line. Music and Moonlight, his latest volume, is no 
advance upon the Lays of France, — a highly poetical, 
though somewhat extravagant adaptation of the Lais 
de Marie, composed in the new manner, but showing, 
in style and measure, that the author has a person- 
ality of his own. The " Lays " resemble the work of 
Morris rather than that of Swinburne ; but " Music 
and Moonlight," and the author's first venture, An 
Epic of Women, are full of the diction and sugges- 
tions of the last-named poet. When this romancer 
becomes lyrical, he is vague and far less pleasing 
than in his narrative-verse. He, too, needs to shake 
off external influences, and acquire a definite purpose, 
before we can attempt to cast his horoscope. Both 
Payne and O'Shaughnessy have thus far shown 
themselves, by culture and affinity, to be pupils of 
the French Romantic school, so elaborate in style 
and subtile in allusions, but not really broad or 
healthy in manner and design. Its romanticism, as 
a new element added to English poetry, is worth 
something, and I hope that its beauty will survive 
its defects. It is an exotic, but English literature 
(like English architecture, sculpture, and music) is so 
thickly grafted with exotic scions as to yield little 
fruit that comes wholly from the parent stock. 

In order to test the new method, let us study it 
when carried to an extreme. This is done by Mar- 
zials, whose poems are the result of Provencal studies. 
In The Gallery of Pigeons, and other Poems, he turns 
his back upon a more serene deity, and vows alle- 
giance to the Muse of Fantasy, or (as he prefers to 



THE MUSE OF FANTASY. 



285 



write it) "Phantasy." At first sight his volume seems 
a burlesque, and certainly would pass for as clever 
a satire as " Firmilian." How else can we interpret 
such a passage as this, which is neither more nor 
less affected than the greater portion of our author's 
work ? — 



" They chase them each, below, above, — 
Half maddened by their minstrelsy, — 

Thro' garths of crimson gladioles ; 
And, shimmering soft like damoisels, 

The angels swarm in glimmering shoals, 

And pin them to their aurioles, 
And mimick back their ritournels." 

The long poem of which this is a .specimen is aptly 
named "A Conceit." Then we have a pastoral of 
" Passionate Dowsabella," and her rival Blowselind. 
Again, "A Tragedy," beginning, 

" Death ! 
Plop. 
The barges down in the river flop," 

and ending, 

"Drop 

Dead. 
Plop, flop. 

Plop." 

Were this written by a satirist, it would be deemed 
the wildest caricature. Read closely, and you see 
that this fantastic nonsense is the work of an artist ; 
that it has a logical design, and is composed in 
serious earnest. Throughout the book there is melo- 
dy, color, and much fancy of a delicate kind. Here 
is a minstrel, with his head turned by a false method, 
and in very great danger, I should say. But lyrical 
absurdities are so much the fashion just now in Eng- 



Poetry of 
the fantastic 
and gro- 
tesque. 



286 



RECENT CRITICISM. 



Want of 

wholesome 

criticism. 



" Scholar's 
work in 
poetry." 



See pages 
205, 206. 



The fore- 
going list of 
poets selected 
to represent 
the mass. 



land, that reviewers seem complacently to accept them. 
It is enough to make us forgive the Georgian critics 
their brutality, and cry out for an hour of Jeffrey or 
Giflord ! To see how these fine fellows plume them- 
selves ! They intensify the mannerism of their leader, 
but do not sustain it by his imagination, fervor, and 
tireless poetic growth. 

Every effort is expended upon decoration rather 
than construction, and upon construction rather than 
invention, by the minor adherents of the romance 
school. In critical notices, which the British pub- 
lishers are wont to print on the fly-leaves of their 
books of verse, praise is frequently bestowed upon 
the contents as " excellent scholar's work in poetry." 
Poetry is treated as an art, not as an inspiration. 
Moreover, just as in the Alexandrian period, researches 
are made into the early tongue; "antique and quaint 
words " are employed ; study endeavors to supply the 
force of nature, and too often hampers the genius of 
true poets. Renaissance, and not creation, is the aim 
and process of the day. 

VII. 

In the foregoing review of the course of British 
minor poetry during the present reign I have not 
tried to be exhaustive, nor to include all the lesser 
poets of the era. The latter would be a difficult 
task, for the time, if not creative, has been abun- 
dantly prolific. Of modern minstrels, as of a certain 
class of heroes, it may be said, that " every year and 
month sends forth a new one"; the press groans with 
their issues. My effort has been to select from the 
large number, whose volumes are within my reach, 



ERRORS OF TH£ MINOR POETS. 



287 



such names as represent the various phases consid- 
ered. Although I have been led insensibly to men- 
tion more than were embraced in my original design, 
doubtless some have been omitted of more repute or 
merit than others that have taken their place. But 
enough has been said to enable us to frame an an- 
swer to the questions implied at the outset : The 
spirit of later British poetry ; is it fresh and proud 
with life, buoyant in hope, and tuneful with the melody 
of unwearied song? Again; has the usage of the time 
eschewed gilded devices and meretricious effect ? Is 
it essentially simple, creative, noble, and enduring ? 

Certainly, with respect to what has been written by 
poets of the meditative school, the former question 
cannot be answered in the affirmative. With much 
simplicity and composure of manner, they have been 
tame, perplexed, and more or less despondent. The 
second test, applied to those guided by Tennyson, 
Browning, and Swinburne, — and who have more or 
less succeeded in catching the manner of these greater 
poets, — is one which their productions fail to un- 
dergo successfully. It may be said that the charac- 
teristics of the early Victorian schools — distinguished 
from those of famous poetic epochs — have been 
reflective, sombre, metaphysical, rather than fruitful, 
spontaneous, and joyously inspired ; while those of 
the later section are more related to culture and ele- 
gant artifice, than to the interpretation of nature or 
the artistic presentation of essential truth. The minor 
idyllists, romancers, and dramatic lyrists have pos- 
sessed much excellence of expression, but do not 
subordinate this to what is to be expressed. They 
laboriously, therefore, hunt for themes, and in various 
ways endeavor to compromise the want of virile imagi- 



Questions 
originally 
suggested. 



Tone of the 
minor philo- 
sophic poets. 



The idyl- 
lists^ ro- 
mancers, 
cnid others. 



288 



THE TRUE FUNCTION OF ART. 



Ruskin upor, 
Art as a 
■means of 
expression. 



His own 
word-paint- 



nation. Ruskin, who always has made an outcry against 
this frigid, perverted taste, established a correct rule 
in the first volume of Modern Painters, applying it to 
either of the fine arts : " Art," he said, " with all its 
technicalities, difficulties, and particular ends, is noth- 
ing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable 

as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing 

Rhythm, melody, precision, and force are, in the words 
of the orator and poet, necessary to their greatness, 
but not the tests of their greatness. It is not by the 
mode of representing and saying, but by what is 
represented and said, that the respective greatness 
either of the painter or writer is to be finally deter- 
mined It is not, however, always easy, either 

in painting or literature, to determine where the in- 
fluence of language stops and where that of thought 

begins But the highest thoughts are those 

which are least • dependent on language, and the dig- 
nity of any composition and the praise to which it is 
entitled are in exact proportion to its independency 
of language or expression." Ruskin's own rhetorical 
gifts are so eminent, formerly leading him into word- 
painting for their display, that he pronounces deci- 
sively on this point, as one who 'does penance for a 
besetting fault. He might have added that the high- 
est thought naturally finds a noble vehicle of expres- 
sion, though the latter does not always include the 
former. To a certain extent he implies this, in his 
statement of a difference (which frequently confronts 
the reader of these late English poets) between what 
is ornamental in language and what is expressive : 
this distinction " is peculiarly necessary in painting ; 
for in the language of words it is nearly impossible 
for that which is not expressive to be beautiful, ex- 



CONSTRUCTION AND DECORATION. 



2S9 



cept by mere rhythm or melody, any sacrifice to which 
is immediately stigmatized as error." Upon this point 
Arnold well calls attention to Goethe's statement that 
"what distinguishes the artist from the amateur is 
architectonike in the highest sense ; that power of ex- 
ecution which creates, forms, and constitutes : not the 
profoundness of single thoughts, not the richness of 
imagery, not the abundance of illustration." 

The rule of architecture may safely be applied to 
poetry, — that construction must be decorated, not dec- 
oration constructed. The reverse of this is practised 
by many of these writers, who are abundantly supplied 
with poetical material, with images, quaint words, con- 
ceits, and dainty rhymes and alliteration, and who 
laboriously seek for themes to constitute the ground- 
work over which these allurements can be displayed. 
Having not even a definite purpose, to say nothing 
of real inspiration, their work, however curious in 
technique, fails to permanently impress even the 
refined reader, and never reaches the heart of the 
people, — to which all emotional art is in the end 
addressed. Far more genuine, as poetry, is the rude 
spontaneous lyric of a natural bard, expressing the 
love, or patriotism, or ardor, to which the common 
pulse of man beats time. The latter outlasts the 
former ; the former, however acceptable for a while, 
inevitably passes out of fashion, — being but a fashion, 
— and is sure to repel the taste of those who, in an- 
other age, may admire some equally false production 
that has come in vogue. 

Judged by the severe rule which requires soul, 
matter, and expression, all combined, does the char- 
acter of recent minor poetry of itself give us cause 
to expect a speedy renewal of the imaginative periods 
13 s 



Goethe's 
statement. 



Construction 
and decora- 
tion. See 
also page 
286. 

Cp." Poets 
of Amer- 
ica ; ' : p. 
459- 



The present 
outlook. 



290 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 



British and 
A merican 
viinor poets 
contrasted. 

Cp. "Poets 
oj Amer- 
ica^ \: p. 

456. 



Freshness 
trnd individ- 
uality of the 
latter. 



See Chap. 
XL 



of British song ? To apply another test which is like 
holding a mirror up to a drawing, suppose that the 
younger American singers were wholly devoted to 
work of the scholastic dilettant sort, would not their 
poetry be subjected to still more neglect and contu- 
mely than it has received from English critics ? On 
the whole, our poets do not occupy themselves with 
mediaeval and classical studies, with elaborate alliter- 
ations, curious measures, and affected refrains. Yet 
they have a perfect right to do this, — or, at least, 
every right that an English poet possesses, under the 
canon that the domain of the artist is boundless, and 
that the historic themes and treasures of all ages and 
places are at his disposal. America has no tradi- 
tional period, except her memories of the mother- 
land. She has as much right to British history, ante- 
dating Queen Anne's time, as the modern British 
poet. Before that epoch, her history, laws, relations, 
all were English, and her books were printed across 
the sea. The story of Mary Stuart, for instance, is 
as proper a theme for an American as for the author 
of Bothwell. Yet even our most eminent poets do 
not greatly avail themselves of this usufruct, and the 
minor songsters, who are many and sweet, sing to ex- 
press some emotion aroused by natural landscape, 
patriotism, friendship, religion, or love. There is 
much originality among those whose note is harsh, 
and much sweetness among those who repeat the 
note of others. And the notes of what foreign bard 
do they repeat with a servility that merits the epithet 
of " mocking-birds," applied to them by a poet whom 
I greatly admire, and often hinted at by others ? 
There is far less imitation of Tennyson, Browning, 
and Swinburne in the minor poetry of America than 



A COMPARATIVE SURVEY. 



291 



in that of Great Britain ; the former always has sweet- 
ness, and often strength, — and not seldom a fresh- 
ness and simplicity that are the garb of fresh and 
simple thoughts. America has been passing through 
the two phases which precede the higher forms of 
art : the landscape period, and the sentimental or emo- 
tional ; and she is now establishing her figure-schools 
of painting and song. A dramatic element is rapidly 
coming to light The truth is that our minor poetry, 
with a few exceptions, is not well known abroad ; a 
matter of the less importance, since this is the coun- 
try, with its millions of living readers, to which the 
true American bard must look for the affectionate 
preservation of his name and fame. After a close 
examination of the. minor poets of Britain, during the 
last fifteen years, I have formed, most unexpectedly, 
the belief that an anthology could be culled from the 
miscellaneous poetry of the United States equally 
lasting and attractive with any selected from that of 
Great Britain. I do not think that British poetry is 
to decline with the loss of Tennyson, Arnold, Brown- 
ing, and the rest. There is no cause for dejection, 
none for discouragement, as to the imaginative litera- 
ture of the motherland. The sterility in question is 
not symbolical of the over-ripening of the historical 
and aged British nation ; but is rather the afternoon 
lethargy and fatigue of a glorious day, — the product 
of a critical, scholarly period succeeding a period of 
unusual splendor, and soon to be followed, as I shall 
hereafter show, by a new cycle of lyrical and dramatic 
achievement; England, the mother of nations, renews 
her youth from her children, and hereafter will not 
be unwilling to receive from us fresh, sturdy, and 
vigorous returns for the gifts we have for two centu- 



TJie recent 
aspect, and 
its true 
meaning. 



Reflex in- 
fluence of 
A merica 
upon the 
motherland. 



292 



THE NEW DAWN. 



Past and 
future. 



ries obtained from her hands. The catholic thinker 
derives from the new-born hope and liberty of our 
own country the prediction of a jubilant and meas- 
ureless art-revival, in which England and America 
shall labor hand to hand. If we have been children, 
guided by our elders, and taught to repeat lispingly 
their antiquated and timorous words, we boast that 
we have attained majority through fire and blood, and 
even now are learning to speak for ourselves. I be- 
lieve that the day is not far distant when the fine 
and sensitive lyrical feeling of America will swell into 
floods of creative song. The most musical of Eng- 
land's younger poets — those on whom her hopes 
depend — are with us, and inscribe their works to 
the champions of freedom and equality in either 
world. Thus our progress may exert a reflex influ- 
ence upon the mother-country; and to the land from 
which we inherit the wisdom of Shakespeare, the rapt- 
ure of Milton, and Wordsworth's insight of natural 
things, our own shall return themes and forces that 
may animate a new-risen choir of her minstrels, while 
neither shall be forbidden to follow melodiously where 
the other may be inspired to lead. 



CHAPTER IX. 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



IN a study of Browning, the most original and un- 
equal of living poets, three features obviously 
present themselves. His dramatic gift, so rare in 
these times, calls for recognition and analysis ; his 
method — the eccentric quality of his expression — 
constantly intrudes upon the reader; lastly, the moral 
of his verse warrants a closer examination than we 
give to the sentiments of a more conventional poet. 
My own perception of the spirit which his poetry, 
despite his assumption of a purely dramatic purpose, 
has breathed from the outset, is one which I shall 
endeavor to convey in simple and direct terms. 

Various other examples have served to illustrate 
the phases of a poet's life, but Browning arouses 
discussion with respect to the elements of poetry as 
an art. Hitherto I have given some account of an 
author's career and writings before proffering a crit- 
ical estimate of the latter. But this man's genius is 
so peculiar, and he has been so isolated in style and 
purpose, that I know not how to speak of his works 
without first seeking a key to f heir interpretation, and 
hence must reverse in some measure the order hitherto 
pursued. 



Robert 



born in 
Camberwell, 
near Lon- 
don. 1812. 



294 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



Character 
of his dra- 
matic gen- 
ius. 



The true 
dramatic 
period. 



It is customary to call Browning a dramatist, and 
without doubt he represents the dramatic element, 
such as it is, of the recent English school. He counts 
among his admirers many intellectual persons, some 
of whom pronounce him the greatest dramatic poet 
since Shakespeare, and one has said that " it is to 
him we must pay homage for whatever is good, and 
great, and profound, in the second period of the 
Poetic Drama of England." 

This may be true ; nevertheless, it also should be 
declared, with certain modifications, that Robert Brown- 
ing, in the original sense of the term, is not a dra- 
matic poet at all. 

Procter, in the preface to a collection of his own 
songs, remarks with precision and truth : " It is, in 
fact, this power of forgetting himself, and of imagin- 
ing and fashioning characters different from his own, 
which constitutes the dramatic quality. A man who 
can set aside his own idiosyncrasy is half a drama- 
tist." Although Browning's earlier poems were in the 
form of plays, and have a dramatic purpose, they are 
at the opposite remove, in spirit and method, from 
the models of the true histrionic era, — the work of 
Fletcher, Webster, and Shakespeare. They have the 
sacred rage and fire, but the flame is that of Brown- 
ing, and not of the separate creations which he strives 
to inform. 

The early drama was the mouthpiece of a passion- 
ate and adventurous era. The stage bore to the 
period the relations of the modern novel and news- 
paper to our own, not only holding the mirror up to 
nature, but showing the " very age and body of the 



HIS DRAMATIC GENIUS. 



295 



time." It was a vital growth, sprung from the people, 
and having a reflex action upon their imagination and 
conduct. Even in Queen Anne's day the theatre was 
the meeting-place of wits, and, if the plays were 
meaner, it was because they copied the manners of 
an artificial world. But, in either case, the play- 
wrights were in no more hazard of representing their 
own natures, in one role after another, than are the 
leader-writers in their versatile articles upon topics of 
our day. They invented a score of characters, or 
took them from real life, grouped them with con- 
summate effect, placed them in dramatic situations, 
lightened tragedy with mirth, mellowed comedy with 
pathos, and produced a healthful and objective dra- 
matic literature. They looked outward, not inward : 
their imagination was the richer for it, and of a 
more varied kind. 

The stage still has its office, but one more sub- 
sidiary than of old. Our own age is no less stirring 
than was the true dramatic period, and is far more 
subtile in thought. But the poets fail to represent it 
objectively, and the drama does not act as a safety- 
valve for the escape of extreme passion and desire. 
That office the novelists have undertaken, while the 
press brings its dramas to every fireside. Yet the 
form of the play still seems to a poet the most com- 
prehensive mould in which to cast a masterpiece. It 
is a combination of scenic and plastic art; it includes 
monologue, dialogue, and song, — action and medita- 
tion, — man and woman, the lover, the soldier, and 
the thinker, — all vivified by the imagination, and 
each essential to the completeness of the whole. 
Even to poets like Byron, who have no perception of 
natures differing from their own, it has a fascination 



The modern 
stage. * 



Cp. " Poets 
of Amer- 
ica''' : pp. 
467-469. 



296 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



Browning 's 
%ubjectivity. 



as a vehicle of expression, and the result is seen in 
"Sardanapalus" and "Cain." Hence the closet-drama; 
and although praiseworthy efforts, as in " Virginius " 
and "Ion," have been made to revive the early method, 
these modern stage-plays often are unpoetical and 
tame. Most of what is excellent in our dramatic 
verse is to be found in plays that could not be suc- 
cessfully enacted. 

While Browning's earlier poems are in the dramatic 
form, his own personality is manifest in the speech 
and movement of almost every character of each 
piece. His spirit is infused, as if by metempsychosis, 
within them all, and forces each to assume a strange 
Pentecostal tone, which we discover to be that of the 
poet himself. Bass, treble, or recitative, — whether in 
pleading, invective, or banter, — the voice still is 
there. But while his characters have a common 
manner and diction, we become so wonted to the 
latter that it seems like a new dialect which we have 
mastered for the sake of its literature. This feeling 
is acquired after some acquaintance with his poems, 
and not upon a first or casual reading of them. 

The brief, separate pieces, which he terms " dra- 
matic lyrics," are just as properly dramas as are 
many of his five-act plays. Several of the latter were 
intended for stage-production. In these we feel that 
the author's special genius is hampered, so that the 
student of Browning deems them less rich and rare 
than his strictly characteristic essays. Even in the 
most conventional, this poet cannot refrain from the 
long monologues, stilted action, and metaphysical dis- 
cursion, which mark the closet-drama and unfit a 
composition for the stage. His chief success is in 
the portrayal of single characters and specific moods. 



THE POET OF PSYCHOLOGY. 



297 



I would not be understood to praise his originality 
at the expense of his greatness. His mission has 
been that of exploring those secret regions which 
generate the forces whose outward phenomena it is 
for the playwrights to illustrate. He has opened a 
new field for the display of emotional power, — found- 
ing, so to speak, a sub-dramatic school of poetry, 
whose office is to follow the workings of the mind, 
to discover the impalpable elements of which human 
motives and passions are composed. The greatest 
forces are the most elusive, the unseen mightier than 
the seen • modern genius chooses to seek for the 
under-currents of the soul rather than to depict acts 
and situations. Browning, as the poet of psychology, 
escapes to that stronghold whither, as I have said, 
science and materialism are not yet prepared to follow 
him. How shall the chemist read the soul ? No 
former poet has so relied upon this province for the 
excursions of his muse. True, he explores by night, 
stumbles, halts, has vague ideas of the topography, 
and often goes back upon his course. But, though 
others complete the unfinished work of Columbus, it 
is to him that we award the glory of discovery, — 
not to the engineers and colonists that succeed him, 
however firmly they plant themselves and correctly 
map out the now undisputed land. 



II. 

Browning's manner is so eccentric as to challenge 
attention and greatly affect our estimate of him as a 
poet. Eccentricity is not a proof of genius, and even 
an artist should remember that originality consists not 
only in doing things differently, but also in " doing 
13 *.. 



His special 
mission. 



A nalysis of 
Browning's 
method. 



298 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



What con- 
stitutes a 
Poet. 



Ruskin on 
popular ap- 
preciation. 



things better." The genius of Shakespeare and Mo- 
liere enlarged and beautified their style ; it did not 
distort it. Again, the grammarian's statement is true, 
that Poetry is a means of Expression. A poet may 
differ from other men in having profounder emotions 
and clearer perceptions, but this is not for him to 
assume, nor a claim which they are swift to grant. 
The lines, 

"O many are the poets that are sown 
By Nature ! men endowed with highest gifts, 
The vision and the faculty divine ; 
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse/' 

imply that the recognized poet is one who gives voice, 
in expressive language, to the common thought and 
feeling which lie deeper than ordinary speech. He 
is the interpreter : moreover, he is the maker, — an 
artist of the beautiful, the inventor of harmonious 
numbers which shall be a lure and a repose. 

A poet, however emotional or rich in thought, must 
not fail to express his conception and make his work 
attractive. Over-possession is worth less than a more 
commonplace faculty ; he that has the former is a 
sorrow to himself and a vexation to his hearers, 
while one whose speech is equal to his needs, and 
who knows his limitations, adds something to the 
treasury of song, and is able to shine in his place, 
"and be content." Certain effects are suggested by 
nature ; the poet discovers new combinations within 
the ground which these afford. Ruskin has shown 
that in the course of years, though long at fault, the 
masses come to appreciate any admirable work. By 
inversion, if, after a long time has passed, the world 
still is repelled by a singer, and finds neither rest 
nor music in him, the fault is not with the world, 



POETRY AND PROSE DISTINGUISHED. 



299 



there is something deficient in his genius, — he is so 
much the less a poet. 

The distinction between poetry and prose must be 
sharply observed. Poetry is an art, — a specific fact, 
which, owing to the vagueness fostered by minor wits, 
we do not sufficiently insist upon. We hear it said 
that an eloquent prose passage is poetry, that a sun- 
set is a poem, and so on. This is well enough for 
rhetorical effect, yet wholly untrue, and no poet should 
permit himself to talk in that way. Poetry is poetry, 
because it differs from prose ; it is artificial, and gives 
us pleasure because we know it to be so. It is 
beautiful thought expressed in rhythmical form, not 
half expressed or uttered in the form of prose. It is 
a metrical structure ; a spirit not disembodied, but in 
the flesh, — so as to affect the senses of living men. 
Such is the poetry of Earth ; what that of a more 
spiritual region may be I know not. Milton and 
Keats never were in doubt as to the meaning of 
their art. It is true that fine prose is a higher form 
of expression than wretched verse ; but when a dis- 
tinguished young English poet thus writes to me, — 

" My own impression is that Verse is an inferior, or infant, 

form of speech, which will ultimately perish altogether 

The Seer, the Vates, the teacher of a new truth, is single, 
while what you call artists are legion," 



Poetry. 
Misuse of 
the term. 



— when I read these words, I remember that the few 
great seers have furnished models for the simplest 
and greatest forms of art ; I feel that this poet 
is growing heretical with respect, not to the law of 
custom, but to a law which is above us all ; I fear 
to discover a want of beauty, a vague transcenden- 
talism, rather than a clear inspiration, in his verse, — 



Cp. " Poets 

of Amer- 
ica'''' : pp. 
327. 373- 



Letter from 
a rising- 
English 



Dangers of 
transcen- 
dentalism. 

Cp. " Poets 
of Amer- 
ica" : pp. 
168, 169, 
249, 253- 



300 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



Impression 
■produced by 
Browning 's 
•work. 



to see him become prosaic and substitute rhetoric for 
passion, realism for naturalness, affectation for lofty 
thought, and, "having been praised for bluntness," to 
"affect a saucy roughness." In short, he is on the 
edge of danger. Yet his remark denotes a just im- 
patience of forms so hackneyed that, once beautiful, 
they now are stale and corrupt. It may be neces- 
sary, with the Pre-Raphaelites, to escape their thral- 
dom and begin anew. But the poet is a creator, not 
an iconoclast, and never will tamely endeavor to say 
in prose what can only be expressed in song. And 
I have faith that my friend's wings will unfold, in 
spite of himself, and lift him bravely as ever on their 
accustomed flights. 

Has the lapse of years made Browning any more 
attractive to the masses, or even to the judicious few ? 
He is said to have " succeeded by a series of fail- 
ures," and so he has, as far as notoriety means suc- 
cess, and despite the perpetuation of his faults. But 
what is the fact which strikes the admiring and sym- 
pathetic student of his poetry and career? Distrust- 
ing my own judgment, I asked a clear and impar- 
tial thinker, — " How does Browning's work impress 
you?" His reply, after a moment's consideration, 
was : " Now that I try to formulate the sensation 
which it always has given me, his work seems that 
of a grand intellect painfully striving for adequate 
use and expression, and never quite attaining either." 
This was, and is, precisely my own feeling. The 
question arises, What is at fault? Browning's genius, 
his chosen mode of expression, his period, or one 
and all of these ? After the flush of youth is over, a 
poet must have a wise method, if he would move 
ahead. He must improve upon instinct by experience 



THOUGHT AND EXPRESSION. 



301 



and common-sense. There is something amiss in one 
who has to grope for his theme and cannot adjust 
himself to his period ; especially in one who cannot 
agreeably handle such themes as he arrives at. More 
than this, however, is the difficulty in Browning's case 
Expression is the flower of thought ; a fine imagina 
tion is wont to be rhythmical and creative, and many 
passages, scattered throughout Browning's works, show 
that his is no exception. It is a certain caprice or 
perverseness of method, that, by long practice, has 
injured his gift of expression ; while an abnormal 
power of ratiocination, and a prosaic regard for de- 
tails, have handicapped him from the beginning. Be- 
sides, in mental arrogance and scorn of authority, he 
has insulted Beauty herself, and furnished too much 
excuse for small offenders. What may be condoned 
in one of his breed is intolerable when mimicked by 
every jackanapes and self-appointed reformer. 

A group of evils, then, has interfered with the 
greatness of his poetry. His style is that of a man 
caught in a morass of ideas through which he has to 
travel, — wearily floundering, grasping here and there, 
and often sinking deeper until there seems no prospect 
of getting through. His latest works have been more 
involved and excursive, less beautiful and elevating, 
than most of those which preceded them. Possibly 
his theory is that which was his wife's instinct, — a 
man being more apt than a woman with some reason 
for what he does, — that poetry is valuable only for 
the statement which it makes, and must always be 
subordinate thereto. Nevertheless, Emerson, in this 
country, seems to have followed a kindred method ; 
and who of our poets is greater, or so wise? 



Defective 
and capri- 
cious ex- 
pression. 



His recent 
productions. 



302 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



Fine natu- 
ral gifts. 



Various 
stirring 
lyrics. 



III. 

Browning's early lyrics, and occasional passages of 
recent date, show that he has melodious intervals, 
and can be very artistic with no loss of original 
power. Often the ring of his verse is sonorous, and 
overcomes the jagged consonantal diction with stir- 
ring lyrical effect. The " Cavalier Tunes " are ex- 
amples. Such choruses as 

"Marching along, fifty-score strong, 
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song ! " 

" King Charles, and who '11 do him right now ? 
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now? 
Give a rouse : here 's, in Hell's despite now, 
King Charles!" 

— these, with, " Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! " 
show that Browning can put in verse the spirit of a 
historic period, and has, or had, in him the making 
of a lyric poet. How fresh and wholesome this work ! 
Finer still that superb stirrup-piece, best of its class 
in the language, " How they brought the good news 
from Ghent to Aix." " Ratisbon " and "The Lost 
Leader," no less, are poems that fasten themselves 
upon literature, and will not be forgotten. The old 
fire flashes out, thirty years after, in " Herve Riel," 
another vigorous production, — unevenly sustained, 
but superior to Longfellow's legendary ballads and 
sagas. From among lighter pieces I will select for 
present mention two, very unlike each other ; one, as 
delightful a child's poem as ever was written, in fancy 
and airy extravagance, and having a wildness and 
pathos all its own, — the daintiest bit of folk-lore in 
English verse, — to what should I refer but " The 
Pied Piper of Hamelin?" The author made a strong 



HIS GENERAL STYLE. 



30: 



bid for the love of children, when he placed " By 
Robert Browning" at its head, in the collection of 
his poems. The other, 

" Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead ! 

Sit and watch by her side an hour," 

appeals, like Wordsworth's " She dwelt among the 
untrodden ways," and Landor's " Rose Aylmer," to 
the hearts of learned and unlettered, one and all. 

Browning's style is the more aggressive, because, in 
compelling beauty itself to suffer a change and con- 
form to all exigencies, it presents such a contrast to 
the refined art of our day. I have shown that much 
of this is due to natural awkwardness, — but that the 
author is able, on fortunate occasions, to better his 
work, has just been amply illustrated. More often 
he either has let his verse have its way, or has shaped 
a theory of art by his own restrictions, and with that 
contempt for the structure of his song which Plato 
and St. Paul entertained for their fleshly bodies. If 
the mischief ceased here, it would not be so bad, 
but his genius has won pupils who copy his vices 
without his strength. He and his wife injured each 
the other's style as much as they sustained their 
common aspiration and love of poesy. To be sure, 
there was a strange similarity, by nature, between 
their modes of speech ; and what I have said of the 
woman's obscurity, affectations, elisions, will apply to 
the man's — with his Vthes and o'thes, his dashes, 
breaks, halting measures, and oracular exclamations 
that convey no dramatic meaning to the reader. Her 
verse is the more spasmodic ; his, the more meta- 
physical, and, while effective in the best of his dramatic 
lyrics, is constantly running into impertinences worse 



Evils of his 

general 

style. 



The two 
Brownings. 



304 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



Disregard 
of the fitness 
of tilings. 



Irreverence. 



Crude real- 
ism. 



than those of his poorest imitators, and which would 
not be tolerated for a moment in a lesser poet. 
Parodies on his style, thrown off as burlesques, are more 
intelligible than much of his " Dramatis Personam" 
Unlike Tennyson, he does not comprehend the limits 
of a theme ; nor is he careful as to the relative im- 
portance either of themes or details; his mind is sc 
alert that its minutest turn of thought must be ut- 
tered j he dwells with equal precision upon the meanest 
and grandest objects, and laboriously jots down every 
point that occurs to him, — parenthesis within paren- 
thesis, — until we have a tangle as intricate as the 
line drawn by an anemometer upon the recording- 
sheet. The poem is all zigzag, criss-cross, at odds 
and ends, — and, though we come out right at last, 
strength and patience are exhausted in mastering it. 
Apply the rule that nothing should be told in verse 
which can be told in prose, and half his measures 
would be condemned ; since their chief metrical pur- 
pose is, through the stress of rhythm, to fix our at- 
tention, by a certain unpleasant fascination, upon a 
process of reasoning from which it otherwise would 
break away. 

For so much of Browning's crudeness as comes from 
inability to express himself, or to find a proper theme, 
he may readily be forgiven ; but whatever is due to 
real or assumed irreverence for the divine art, among 
whose votaries he stands enrolled, is a grievous wrong, 
unworthy of the humble and delightful spirit of a true 
craftsman. He forgets that art is the bride of the 
imagination, from whose embraces true creative work 
must spring. Lastly, concerning realism, while poets 
are, as Mrs. Browning said, "your only truth-tellers/ 
it is not well that repulsive or petty facts should 



'PARACELSUS: 



305 



always be recorded ; only the high, essential truths 
demand a poet's illumination. The obscurity wherein 
Browning disguises his realism is but the semblance 
of imagination, — a mist through which rugged details 
jut out, while the central truth is feebly to be seen. 

IV. 

After a period of study at the London University 
young Browning, in 1832, went to Italy, and acquired 
a remarkable knowledge of the Italian life and lan- 
guage. He mingled with all classes of the people, 
mastered details, and rummaged among the monas- 
teries of Lombardy and Venice, studying mediaeval 
history, and filling his mind with the relics of a by- 
gone time. All this had much to do with the bent 
of his subsequent work, and possibly was of more 
benefit to his learning than to his ideality. 

At the age of twenty-three he published his first 
drama, Paracelsus; a most unique production, — strictly 
speaking, a metaphysical dialogue, as noticeable for 
analytic power as the romances of Keats for pure 
beauty. It did not find many readers, but no man 
of letters could peruse it without seeing that a genu- 
ine poet had come to light. From that time the 
author moved in the literary society of London, and 
was recognized as one who had done something and 
might do something more. The play is " Faust," 
with the action and passion, and much of the poetry 
and music, — upon which the fascination of the German 
work depends, — omitted; the hero resembles "Faust" 
in the double aspiration to know and to enjoy, to 
search out mystical knowledge, yet drink at all the 
fountains of pleasure, — lest, after a long struggle, 



Browning' s 
dramas, ana 
" Sordello." 



'''Paracel- 
sus." 
1835-36. 



306 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



Character- 
istic merits 
and defects. 



failing of knowledge, he should have lived in vain. 
It must be understood that Mr. Browning's Paracel- 
sus was his own creation : a man of heroic longings, 
observed at various intervals, from his twentieth year, 
in which he leaves his native hamlet, until he dies 
at the age of forty-eight, — obscure, and with his 
ideal seemingly unattained ; not the juggler, empiric, 
and charlatan of history, whose record the poet 
frankly gives us in a foot-note. 

This poem has every characteristic of Browning's 
genius. The verse is as strong and as weak as the 
best and worst he has composed during thirty years, 
and is pitched in a key now familiar to us all. 
" Paracelsus," the fruit of his youth, serves as well 
for a study of this poet as any later effort, and, 
though inferior to " Pippa Passes " and " In a Bal- 
cony," is much better than his newest romance in 
blank verse. I cannot agree with critics who say 
that he did his poorest work first and has been mov- 
ing along an ascending scale ; on the contrary, his 
faults and beauties have been somewhat evenly dis- 
tributed throughout his career. We are vexed in 
" Paracelsus " by a vice that haunts him still, — that 
tedious garrulity which, however relieved by beautiful 
passages, palls on the reader and weakens the gen- 
eral effect. As an offset, he displays in this poem, 
with respect to every kind of poetic faculty except 
the sense of proportion, gifts equal to those of any 
compeer. By turns be is surpassingly fine. We have 
strong dramatic diction : — 

"Festus, strange secrets are let out by Death, 
Who blabs so oft the follies of this world : 
And I am Death's familiar, as you know. 



PARACELSUS: 



307 



I helped a man to die, some few weeks since ; 

. . . . No mean trick 
He left untried ; and truly wellnigh wormed 
All traces of God's finger out of him. 
Then died, grown old; and just an hour before- — 
Having lain long with blank and soulless eyes — 
He sate up suddenly, and with natural voice 
Said, that in spite of thick air and closed doors 
God told him it was June ; and he knew well, 
Without such telling, harebells grew in June ; 
And all that kings could ever give or take 
Would not be precious as those blooms to him." 

The conception is old as Shakespeare, l>ut the 
manner is large and effective. Few authors vary the 
breaks and pauses of their blank verse so naturally 
as Browning, and none can so well dare to extend 
the proper limits of a poem. Here, as in later plays, 
he shows a more realistic perception of scenery and 
fc nature than is common with dramatic poets. We have 
a bit of painting at the outset, in the passage begin- 
ning, 

"Nay, Autumn wins you best by this its mute 
Appeal to sympathy for its decay ! " 

and others, equally fine and true, are scattered through- 
out the dialogue. 

"Paracelsus" is meant to illustrate the growth and 
progress of a lofty spirit, groping in the darkness of 
his time. He first aspires to knowledge, and fails ; 
then to pleasure and knowledge, and equally fails 
— to human eyes. The secret ever seems close at 
hand : — 

"Ah, the curse, Aprile, Aprile! 
We get so near — so very, very near! 
'T is an old tale : Jove strikes the Titans down 
Not when they set about their mountain-piling, 
But when another rock would crown their work!" 



Browning's 
blank verse. 



3 o8 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



"Straf- 
ford," 1837. 



Now, it is a part of Browning's life-long habit, that 
he here refuses to judge by ordinary standards, and 
makes the hero's attainment lie even in his failure 
and death. There are few more daring assertions of 
the soul's absolute freedom than the words of Festus, 
impressed by the nobility of his dying friend : — 

"I am for noble Aureole, God! 
I am upon his side, come weal or woe ! 
His portion shall be mine ! He has done well ! 
I would have sinned, had I been strong enough, 
As he has sinned! Reward him, or I waive 
Reward ! If thou canst find no place for him 
H% shall be king elsewhere, and I will be 
His slave forever ! There are two of us ! " 

The drama is well worth preserving, and even now 
a curious and highly suggestive study. Its lyrical 
interludes seem out of place. As an author's first 
drama, it promised more for his future than if it had fc 
been a finished production, and in any other case 
but that of the capricious, tongue-tied Browning, the 
promise might have been abundantly fulfilled. 

In " Strafford," his second drama, the interest also 
centres upon the struggles and motives of one heroic 
personage, this time entangled in a fatal mesh of 
great events. Apparently the poet, after some ex- 
perience of authorship, wished to commend his work 
to popular sympathy, and tried to write a play that 
should be fitted for the stage ; hence a tragedy, dedi- 
cated to Macready, of which the chief character, — the 
hapless Earl of Strafford, — was assumed by that 
tragedian. The piece is said to have been well re- 
ceived, but ran for five nights only, one of the chief 
actors suddenly withdrawing from the cast. The 
characters are eccentrically drawn, and are more 



'STRAFFORD' AND ' SORDELLO: 



309 



serious and mystical than even the gloom of their 
period would demand. It is hard to perceive the 
motives of Lady Carlisle and the Queen ; there is no 
underplot of love in the play, to develop the womanly 
element, nor has it the humor of the great play- 
wrights, — so essential to dramatic contrast, and for 
which the Puritans and the London populace might 
afford rich material. Imagine Macready stalking por- 
tentously through the piece, the audience trying to 
follow the story, and listening with patience to the 
solemn speeches of Pym and Strafford, which answer 
for a death-scene at the close. The language is 
more natural than is usual with Browning, but here, 
where he is least eccentric, he becomes tame — until 
we see that he is out of his element, and prefer his 
striking psychology to a forced attempt at writing of 
the academic kind. 

Something of this must have struck the poet him- 
self, for, as if chagrined at his effort, he swung back 
to the other extreme, and beyond his early starting- 
place : farther, happily, than any point he since has 
ventured to reach. In no one of his recent works 
has he been quite so "hard," loquacious, and im- 
practicable as in the renowned nondescript entitled 
Sordello. Twenty-three years after its appearance he 
owned that its "faults of expression were many," and 
added, "but with care for a man or book such would 
be surmounted." The acknowledgment was partial. 
" Sordello " is a fault throughout, in conception and 
execution : nothing is " expressed," not even the " in- 
cidents in the development of a soul," though such 
incidents may have had some nebulous origin in the 
poet's mind. It is asking too much of our care for 
& book or a man that we should surmount this chaotic 



' Sordello^ 

1840. 



3IO 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



" Bells and 
Pomegran- 
ates" 1840- 
46. 

"Luria" 



mass of word-building. Carlyle's " Sartor Resartus " 
is a hard study, but, once entered upon, how po- 
etical ! what lofty episodes ! what wisdom, beauty, 
and scorn ! Few such treasures await him that would 
read the eleven thousand verses into which the fatal 
facility of the rhymed-heroic measure has led the 
muse of Browning. The structure, by its very ugli- 
ness and bulk, like some half-buried colossus in the 
desert, may survive a lapse of time, I cannot per- 
suade myself to solicit credit for deeper insight by 
differing from the common judgment with regard to 
this unattractive prodigy. 

It had its uses, seemingly, in acting as a purge to 
cleanse the visual humors of the poet's eyes and to 
leave his general system in an auspicious condition. 
His next six years were devoted to the composition 
of a picturesque group of dramas, — ■ the exact order 
of which escapes me, but which finally were collected 
in Bells and Pomegranates, a popular edition, issued 
in serial numbers, of this maturer work. " Luria," 
" King Victor and King Charles," and " The Return 
of the Druses," are stately pieces, historical or legend- 
ary, cast in full stage-form. In Luria we again see 
Browning's favorite characterization, from a different 
point of view. This is a large-moulded, suffering hero, 
akin, if disturbed in conscience, to Wallenstein, — 
if devoted and magnanimous, to Othello. Luria, the 
Moor, is like Othello in many ways: a brave and skil- 
ful general, who serves Florence (instead of Venice), 
and declares, 

" I can and have perhaps obliged the state, 
Nor paid a mere son's duty." 

He is so true and simple, that Domizia says of 
him, 



'LURIA. 



311 



"How plainly is true greatness charactered 
By such unconsciousness as Luria's here, 
And sharing least the secret of itself!" 

Browning makes devotion to an ideal or trust, how- 
ever unworthy of it, the chief trait of this class of 
personages. Strafford dies in behalf of ungrateful 
Charles ; Luria is sacrificed by the Florence he has 
saved, and destroys himself at the moment when love 
and honor are hastening, too late, to crown him. 
Djabal, false to himself, is true to the cause of the 
Druses, and at last dies in expiation of his fault. 
Valence, in " Colombe's Birthday," shows devotion of 
a double kind, but is rewarded for his fidelity and 
honor. Luitolfo, in "A Soul's Tragedy," is of a 
kindred type. But I am anticipating. The language 
of " Luria " often is in the grand manner. In depict- 
ing the Moorish general and his friend Husain, — 
brooding, generous children of the sun, — the soldierly 
Tiburzio, painted with a few master-strokes, — and in 
the element of Italian craft and intrigue, the author 
is at home and well served by his knowledge of 
mediaeval times. That is an eloquent speech of Do- 
mizia, near the end of the fourth act. Despite the 
poverty of action, and the prolonged harangues, this 
drama is worthy of its dedication to Landor and the 
wish that it might be "read by his light": almost 
worthy (Landor always weighed out gold for silver !) 
of the old bard's munificent return of praise : — 

" Shakespeare is not our poet but the world's, 
Therefore on him no speech ! and brief for thee, 
Browning ! Since Chaucer was alive and hale, 
No man hath walked along our roads with step 
So active so inquiring eye, or tongue 
So varied in discourse. But warmer climes 



A favorite 
characteri- 
zation. 



Landor to 
Browning: 



312 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



" The Re- 
turn of the 
Druses." 



Give brighter plumage, stronger wing : the breeze 
Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on 
Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where 
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song." 

"The Return of the Druses," with its scenic and 
choric effects, { is like some of Byron's plays : the 
scene, an isle of the Sporades ; the legend, half- 
Venetian, half-Oriental, one that only Browning could 
make available. The girl Anael is an impassioned 
character, divided between adoration for Hakeem, the 
god of her race, — whom she believes incarnate in 
Djabal, — and her love for Djabal as a man. The 
tragedy, amid a good deal of trite and pedantic lan- 
guage, is marked by heroic situations and sudden 
dramatic catastrophes. Several brilliant points are 
made : one, where the Prefect lifts the arras, on the 
other side of which death awaits him, and says, — 

"This is the first time for long years I enter 
Thus, without feeling just as if I lifted 
The lid up of my tomb ! . . . . 

Let me repeat — for the first time, no draught 
Coming as from a sepulchre salutes me ! " 

A moment, and the dagger is through his heart. 
Another such is the wonder and contempt of Anael 
at finding Djabal no deity, but an impostor ; while 
perhaps the most telling point in the whole series of 
Browning's plays is her cry of Hakeem/ made when 
she comes to denounce Djabal, but, moved by love, 
proclaims him as the god, and falls dead with the 
effort. The poet, however, is justly censured for too 
frequently taking off his personages by the intensity 
of their own passions, without recourse to the dagger 



THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES. 



313 



and bowl. He rarely does it after the "high Roman 
fashion."' 

This tragedy observes the classic unities of time 
and place. A hall in the Prefect's palace is made to 
cover its entire action, which occupies only one day. 
In its earnest pitch and lack of sprightly underplot, 
it also is Greek or Italian. Not long ago, listening 
to Salvini in "Samson" and other plays, I was struck 
by their likeness, in simplicity of action and costume, 
to the antique dramas. The actors were sufficient to 
themselves, and the audience was intent upon their 
lofty speech and passion ; there was no lack of 
interest, but a refreshing spiritual elevation. The 
Gothic method better suits the English stage, never- 
theless we need not refuse to profit by the experi- 
ence of other lands. Our poetry, like the language, 
should draw its riches from all tongues and races, 
and well can endure a larger infusion of the ancient 
grandeur and simplicity. In the play before us 
Browning has but renewed the debt, long since in- 
curred, of English literature to the Italian, — greater 
than that to all other sources combined. Not with- 
out reason, in " De Gustibus," he sang, — 

" Open my heart and you will see, 
Graved inside of it, ' Italy.' 
Such lovers old are I and she ; 
So it always was, so it still shall be ! " 

"King Victor" is one of those conventional plays 
in which he appears to ordinary advantage. His 
three dramatic masterpieces are " Pippa Passes," " A 
Blot in the 'Scutcheon," and " Colombe's Birthday." 

The last-named play, inscribed to Barry Cornwall, 
really is a fresh and lovely little drama. The fair 
14 



The Classi- 
cal and 
Gothic meth- 
ods in dra- 
matic art. 



"King Vic 
tor and 
King 
Charles." 



" Colombe's 
Birthday." 






314 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



"A Blot in 
the 'Scutch- 
eon." 



young heroine has possessed her duchy for a single 
year, and now, upon her birthday, as she unsuspect- 
ingly awaits the greetings of her courtiers, is called 
upon to surrender her inheritance to Prince Berthold, 
decreed to be the lawful heir. At the same time 
Valence, a poor advocate of Cleves, seeks audience 
in behalf of his suffering townsmen, and ends by 
defending the Duchess's title to her rank. She loves 
him, and is so impressed by his nobility and cour- 
age as to decline the hand of the Prince, and sur- 
render her duchy, to become the wife of Valence, 
with whom she joyfully retires to the ruined castle 
where her youth was spent. This play might be 
performed to the great interest of an audience com- 
posed exclusively of intellectual persons, who could 
follow the elaborate dialogue and would be charmed 
with its poetry and subtile thought. Once accept the 
manner of Browning, and you must be pleased with 
the delineation of the characters. " Colombe " herself 
is exquisite, and like one of Shakespeare's women. 
Valence seems too harsh and dry to win her, and 
her choice, despite his loyalty and intellect, is hardly 
defensible. Still, " Colombe's Birthday " is the most 
natural and winsome of the author's stage-plays. 

" A Blot in the 'Scutcheon " was brought out at 
Drury Lane, in 1843. It is full of poetry and pathos, 
but there is little in it to relieve the human spirit, — 
which cannot bear too much of earnestness and woe 
added to the mystery and burden of our daily lives. 
Yet the piece has such tragic strength as to stamp 
the author as a great poet, though in a narrow range. 
One almost forgets the singular improbabilities of the 
story, the blase talk of the child-lovers (an English 
Juliet of fourteen is against nature), the stiff language 



'■A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON: 



315 



of the retainers, and various other blemishes. There 
is a serenade in which, unchecked by his fear of 
detection, Mertoun is made to sing under Mildred's 
window, — 

" There 's a woman like the dew-drop, she 's so purer than the 
purest ! " 

This song, composed seven years before the poet's 
meeting with Miss Barrett, is precisely in the style of 
"Lady Geraldine's Courtship," and other ballads of 
the gifted woman who became his wife. 

The most simple and varied of his plays — that 
which shows every side of his genius, has most light- 
ness and strength, and all in all may be termed a 
representative poem — is the beautiful drama with 
the quaint title of " Pippa Passes." It is a cluster of 
four scenes, with prologue, epilogue, and interludes ; 
half prose, half poetry, varying with the refinement of 
the dialogue. Pippa is a delicately pure, good, blithe- 
some peasant-maid. " 'T is but a little black-eyed, 
pretty, singing Felippa, gay silk-winding girl," — though 
with token, ere the end, that she is the child of a 
nobleman, put out of the way by a villain, MafTeo, at 
instigation of the next heir. Pippa knows nothing of 
this, but is piously content with her life of toil. It 
is New Year's Day at Asolo. She springs from bed, 
in her garret chamber, at sunrise, — resolved to enjoy 
to the full her sole holiday : she will not " squander 
a wavelet" of it, not a "mite of her twelve hours' 
treasure." Others can be happy throughout the year: 
haughty Ottima and Sebald, the lovers on the hill ; 
Jules and Phene, the artist and his bride ; Luigi and 
his mother ; Monsignor, the Bishop ; but Pippa has 
only this one day to enjoy. She envies these great 



"■Pippa 
Passes." 



3i6 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



Intense pas- 
sion and 
beauty. 



ones a little, but reflects that God's love is best, after 
all. And yet, how little can she do! How can she 
possibly _ affect the world ? Thus she muses, and goes 
out, singing, to her holiday and the sunshine. Now, 
it so happens that she passes, this day, each of the 
groups or persons we have named, at an important 
crisis in their lives, and they hear her various carols 
as she trills them forth in the innocent gladness of 
her heart Sebald and Ottima have murdered the 
latter's aged husband, and are unremorseful in their 
guilty love. Jules is the victim of a fraud practised 
by his rival artists, who have put in his way a young 
girl, a paid model, whom he believes to be a pure 
and cultured maiden. He has married her, and just 
discovered the imposture. Luigi is hesitating whether 
to join a patriotic conspiracy. Monsignor is tempted 
by Maffeo to overlook his late brother's murder, for 
the sake of the estates, and utterly to ruin Pippa. 
The scene between Ottima and Sebald is the most 
intense and striking passage of all Browning's poetry, 
and, possibly, of any dramatic verse composed during 
his lifetime up to the date of this play. A passion- 
ate esoteric theme is treated with such vigor and 
skill as to free it from any debasing taint, in the 
dialogue from which I quote : — 

" Ottima The past, would you give up the past 

Such as it is, pleasure and crime together ? 
Give up that noon I owned my love for you — 
The garden's silence — even the single bee, 
Persisting in his toil, suddenly stopt, 
And where he hid you only could surmise 
By some campanula's chalice set a-swing 
As he clung there — ' Yes, I love you ! ' 

Sebald. And I drew 

Back ; put ft bark your fa ;e with both my hands 



PIP PA PASSES. 



317 



Lest you should grow too full of me — your face 
So seemed athirst for my whole soul and body ! 

Ottima. Then our crowning night — 

Sebald. The July night ? 

Ottima. The day of it too, Sebald ! 
When the heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat, 
Its black-blue canopy seemed let descend 
Close on us both, to weigh down each to each, 
And smother up all life except our life. 
So lay we till the storm came. 

Sebald. How it came ! 

Ottima. Buried in woods we lay, you recollect; 
Swift ran the searching tempest overhead ; 
And ever and anon some bright white shaft 
Burnt thro' the pine-tree roof, — here burnt and there, 
As if God's messenger thro' the close wood screen 
Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture, 
Feeling for guilty thee and me : then broke 
The thunder like a whole sea overhead — 

Sebald. Yes ! 

How did we ever rise ? 
Was it that we slept? Why did it end? 

Ottima. I felt you, 

Fresh tapering to a point the ruffled ends 
Of my loose locks 'twixt both your humid lips — 
(My hair is fallen now — knot it again ! ) 

Sebald. I kiss you now, dear Ottima, now, and now ! 
This way ? Will you forgive me — be once more 
My great queen ? 

Ottima. Bind it thrice about my brow ; 

Crown me your queen, your spirit's arbitress, 
Magnificent in sin. Say that ! 

Sebald. I crown you 

My great white queen, my spirit's arbitress, 
Magnificent — " 

But here Pippa passes, singing 

"God's in his heaven, — 
All 's right with the world ! " 



See " Pippft 
Passes," 
Scene I. 



3i8 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



Too intel- 
lectual. 



Sebald is stricken with fear and remorse ; his para- 
mour becomes hideous in his eyes; he bids her dress 
her shoulders, wipe off that paint, and leave him, for 
he hates her ! She, the woman, is at least true to 
her lover, and prays God to be merciful, not to her, 
but to him. 

The scene changes to the post-nuptial meeting of 
Jules and Phene, and then in succession to the other 
passages and characters we have mentioned. All 
these persons are vitally affected, — have their lives 
changed, merely by Pippa's weird and suggestive 
songs, coming, as if by accident, upon their hearing 
at the critical moment. With certain reservations this 
is a strong and delicate conception, admirably worked 
out. The usual fault is present : the characters, 
whether students, peasants, or soldiers, all talk like 
sages ; Pippa reasons like a Paracelsus in panta- 
lets, — her intellectual songs are strangely put in the 
mouth of an ignorant silk-winding girl ; Phene is 
more natural, though mature, even for Italy, at four- 
teen. Browning's children are old as himself ; — he 
rarely sees them objectively. Even in the songs he is 
awkward, void of lyric grace ; if they have the wild- 
ing flavor, they have more than need be of specks 
and gnarledness. In the epilogue Pippa seeks her 
garret, and, as she disrobes, after artlessly running 
over the events of her holiday, soliloquizes thus : — 

" Now, one thing I should like really to know : 
How near I ever might approach all these 
I only fancied being, this long day — 
— Approach, I mean, so as to touch them — so 
As to . . in some way . . move them — if you please, 
Do good or evil to them some slight way." 

Finally, she sleeps, — unconscious of her day's mis- 



a sours tragedy: 



319 



sion, — and of the fact that her own life is to be 
something more than it has been, — but not until she 
has murmured these words of a hymn : — 

" All service is the same with God, — 
With God, whose puppets, best and worst, 
Are we : there is no last nor first." 

" Pippa Passes " is a work of pure art, and has a 
wealth of original fancy and romance, apart from its 
wisdom, to which every poet will do justice. Its 
faults are those of style and undue intellectuality. 
To quote the author's words, in another drama, 

" Ah ? well ! he o'er-refines, — the scholar's fault ! " 

As it is, we accept his work, looking upon it as upon 
some treasured yet bizarre painting of the mixed 
school, whose beauties are the more striking for its 
defects. The former are inherent, the latter external 
and subordinate. 

Everything from this poet is, or used to be, of 
value and interest, and " A Soul's Tragedy " is of 
both: first, for a masterly distinction between the 
action of sentiment and that founded on principle, 
and, secondly, for wit, satire, and knowledge of af- 
fairs. Ogniben, the Legate, is the most thorough 
man of the world Browning has drawn. That is a 
matchless stroke, at the close, where he says : " I 
have seen four-and-twenty leaders of revolts." It is 
a consolation to recall this when a pretender arises ; 
his race is measured, — his fall will surely come. 

With "Luria," in 1845-6, Browning, whose plays 
had been briefly performed, and whose closet-dra- 
mas had found too small a reading, made his " last 
attempt, for the present, at dramatic poetry." It 



A rare and 

exquisite 
production. 



"^ SouPs 
Tragedy." 



320 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



Dramatic 
naUire of 
Browning 's 
lyrics. 



Founder of 
the new life- 
school. 



remains to examine his miscellaneous after-work, in- 
cluding the long poems which have appeared within 
the last five years, — thus far the most prolific, if not 
the most creative, period of his untiring life. 



V. 

Something of a dramatic character pertains to 
nearly all of Browning's lyrics. Like his wife, he has 
preferred to study human hearts rather than the 
forms of nature. A note to the first collection of 
his briefer poems places them under the head of 
Dramatic Pieces. This was at a time when English 
poets were enslaved to the idyllic method, and forgot 
that their readers had passions most suggestive to art 
when exalted above the tranquillity of picturesque re- 
pose. Herein Browning justly may claim originality. 
Even the Laureate combined the art of Keats with 
the contemplative habit of Wordsworth, and adapted 
them to his own times ; while Browning was the 
prophet of that reaction which holds that the proper 
study of mankind is man. His effort, weak or able, 
was at figure-painting, in distinction from that of 
landscape or still-life. It has not flourished during 
the recent period, but we are indebted to him for 
what we have of it. In an adverse time it was 
natural for it to assume peculiar, almost morbid 
phases ; but of this struggling, turbid figure-school, — 
variously represented by the younger Lytton, Rossetti, 
Swinburne, and others, he was the long-neglected 
progenitor. His genius may have been unequal to 
his aims. It is not easy for him to combine a score 
of figures upon the ample canvas : his work is at its 
best in separate ideals, or, rather, in portraits, — his 



DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND LYRICS. 



321 



dramatic talent being more realistic than imaginative. 
Still, portraiture, in a certain sense, is the highest 
form of painting, and Browning's personal studies 
must not be undervalued. As usual, even here he is 
unequal, and, while some of them are matchless, in 
others, like all men of genius who aim at the highest, 
he conspicuously fails. A man of talent may never 
fail, yet never rise above a fixed height. Yet if 
Browning were a man of great genius his failures 
would not so outnumber his successes that half his 
lyrics could be missed without injury to his repu- 
tation. 

The shorter pieces, " Dramatic Romances and Lyr- 
ics," in the first general collection of his works, are 
of a better average grade than those in his latest 
book of miscellanies. One of the best is " My Last 
Duchess," a masterly sketch, comprising within sixty 
lines enough matter to furnish Browning, nowadays, 
with an excuse for a quarto. Nothing can be subtler 
than the art whereby the Duke is made to reveal a 
cruel tragedy of which he was the relentless villain, 
to betray the blackness of his heart, and to suggest 
a companion-tragedy in his betrothal close at hand. 
Thus was introduced a new method, applied with 
such coolness as to suggest the idea of vivisection or 
morbid anatomy. 

But let us group other lyrics in this collection with 
the matter of two later volumes, Men and Women, 
and Dramatis Persona. These books, made up of 
isolated poems, contain the bulk of his work during 
the eighteen years which followed his marriage in 
1846. While their contents include no long poem or 
drama, they seem, upon the whole, to be the fullest 
expression of his genius, and that for which he is 
14* u 



"My Last 
Duchess." 



"Men and 
Women" 

iS S5 . 

" Dramatis 

Personce" 

1864. 



322 



ROBERT BROWNING, 



Inferiority 
of the last- 
named vol- 
ume. 



''Men and 
Women'''' a 
representa- 
tive work. 



" Andrea 
iel Sarto." 



likeliest to be remembered. Every poet has limita- 
tions, and in such briefer studies Browning keeps 
within the narrowest bounds allotted to him. Very 
few of his best pieces are in " Dramatis Personam," 
the greater part of which book is made up of his 
most ragged, uncouth, and even puerile verse ; and 
it is curious that it appeared at a time when his wife 
was scribbling the rhetorical verse of those years 
which I have designated as her period of decline. 
But observe the general excellence of the fifty poems 
in " Men and Women," — collected nine years earlier, 
when the author was forty-three years old, and at his 
prime. In the chapter upon Tennyson it was stated 
that almost every poet has a representative book, 
showing him at full height and variety. " Men and 
Women," like the Laureate's volume of 1842, is the 
most finished and comprehensive of the author's 
works, and the one his readers least could spare. 
Here we find numbers of those thrilling, skilfully 
dramatic studies, which so many have imitated with- 
out catching the secret of their power. 

The general effect of Browning's miscellaneous 
poems is like that of a picture-gallery, where cabinet- 
paintings, by old and modern masters, are placed at 
random upon the walls. Some are rich in color ; 
others, strong in light and shade. A few are elabo- 
rately finished, — more are careless drawings, fresh, but 
hurriedly sketched in. Often the subjects are repul- 
sive, but occasionally we have the solitary, impressive 
figure of a lover or a saint. 

The poet is as familiar with mediaeval thought and 
story as most authors with their own time, and adapts 
them to his lyrical uses. " Andrea del Sarto " be- 
longs to the same group with " My Last Duchess." 



'MEN AND WOMEN: 



323 



It is the language of " the faultless painter," ad- 
dressed to his beautiful and thoughtless wife, for 
whom he has lowered his ideal — and from whose 
chains he cannot break, though he knows she is un- 
worthy, and even false to him. He moans before 
one of Rafael's drawings, excusing the faults, in envy 
of the genius : — 

" Still, what an arm ! and I could alter it. 
But all the play, the insight and the stretch- 
out of me ! out of me ! And wherefore out ? 
Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul, 
We might have risen to Rafael, I and you. 

But had you — O, with the same perfect brow, 
And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth, 
And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird 
The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare, — 
Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind ! 
Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged 
• God and the glory ! never care for gain ! ' 

I might have done it for you." 

Were it indeed "all for love," then were the "world 
well lost " ; but even while he dallies with his wife 
she listens for her gallant's signal. This poem is 
one of Browning's finest studies : of late he has 
given us nothing equal to it. The picture of the 
rollicking " Fra Lippo Lippi " is broad, free-handed, 
yet scarcely so well done. " Pictor Ignotus " is upon 
another art-theme, and in quiet beauty differs from 
the poet's usual manner. Other old-time studies, 
good and poor, which served to set the fashion for a 
number of minor poets, are such pieces as " Count 
Gismond," " Cristina," "The Laboratory," and "The 
Confessional." 



"Fra Liftfio 
Lippi" etc, 



324 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



" Christmas 
Eve" and 
" Easter 
Day," 1850. 



Excellent 
medi&val 
church 
studies. 



How perilous an easy rhymed-metre is to this 
author was discernible in "Sordello." After the same 
manner he is tempted to garrulity in the semi-relig- 
ious poems, " Christmas Eve " and " Easter Day." It 
is difficult otherwise to account for their dreary flow, 
since they are no more original in theology than 
poetical in language and design. 

It would be strange if Browning were not indebted, 
for some of his most powerful themes, to the super- 
stition from which mediaeval art, politics, and daily 
life took their prevailing tone. In his analysis of 
its quality he seems to me extremely profound. Mo- 
nasticism in Spain even now is not so different from 
that of the fifteenth century, and the repulsive im- 
agery of a piece like the " Soliloquy of the Spanish 
Cloister," written in the harshest verse, well consorts 
with a period when the orders, that took their origin 
in exalted purity, had become degraded through lust, 
gluttony, jealousy, and every cardinal sin. Browning 
draws his monks, as Dore in the illustrations to "Les 
Contes Drolatiques," with porcine or wolfish faces, 
monstrous, seamed with vice, defiled in body and 
soul. "The Bishop orders his Tomb" has been criti- 
cised as not being a faithful study of the Romish 
ecclesiastic, A. D. 15 — ; but, unless I misapprehend 
the spirit of that period, this is one of the poet's 
portraitures. Religion then was often a 



compound of fear, bigotry, and greed ; its officers, 
trained in the Church, seemed to themselves invested 
with something greater than themselves ; their ideas 
of good and evil, after years of ritualistic service, — 
made gross with pelf, jealousy, sensualism, and even 
blood-guiltiness, — became strangely intermixed. The 
poet overlays this groundwork with that love of art 



MEDIAEVAL STUDIES. 



325 



and luxury — of jasper, peach-blossom marble, and 
lazuli — inbred in every Italian, — and even with the 
scholar's desire to have his epitaph carved aright : — 

" Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, 
No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line, — 
Tully, my masters ? Ulpian serves his need ! 
And then how I shall lie through centuries, 
And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, 
And see God made and eaten all day long, 
And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste 
Good, strong, thick, stupefying incense-smoke ! " 

All this commanded to his bastards ! And for the 
rest, were ever suspicion, hatred, delight at outwit- 
ting a rival in love and preferment, and every other 
loathsome passion strong in death, more ruthlessly 
and truthfully depicted? 

Of strictly mediaeval church studies, "The Heretic's 
Tragedy" and "Holy-Cross Day," with their grotesque 
diction, annotations, and prefixes, are the most skil- 
ful reproductions essayed in our time. Browning 
alone could have conceived or written them. In " A 
Grammarian's Funeral," " Abt Vogler," and " Master 
Hugues," early scholarship and music are commemo- 
rated. The language of the simplest of these is so in- 
tricate that we have to be educated in a new tongue 
to comprehend them. Their value lies in the human 
nature revealed under such fantastic, and, to us, un- 
natural aspects developed in other times. 

" Artemis Prologuizes," the poet's antique sketch, 
is as unclassical as one might expect from its affected 
title. "Saul," a finer poem, may have furnished hints 
to Swinburne with respect to anapestic verse and the 
Hebraic feeling. Three poems, which strive to re- 
produce the early likeness and spirit of Christianity, 



" The Her- 
etic's Trag- 
edy" etc. 



Studies 
upon themes 
taken from 
the first 
century- 



326 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



Clean. 



"A Death 
in the Des- 
ert:' 



merit close attention. One describes the raising of 
Lazarus, narrated in an " Epistle of Karshish, the 
Arab Physician." The pious, learned mage sees in 
the miracle 

" but a case of mania — subinduced 
By epilepsy, at the turning-point 
Of trance prolonged unduly some three days." 

" Cleon " is an exposition of the highest ground 
reached by the Pagan philosophy, set forth in a 
letter written, by a wise poet, to Protos, the King. 
At the end he makes light of the preachings of Paul, 
who is welcome to the few proselytes he can make 
among the ignorant slaves : — 

"And (as I gathered from a bystander) 
Their doctrines could be held by no sane man." 

The reader is forced to stop and consider what 
despised doctrines even now may be afloat, which in 
time may constitute the whole world's creed. The 
most elaborate of these pieces is "A Death in the 
Desert," the last words of St. John, the Evangelist, 
recorded by Pamphylax, an Antiochene martyr. The 
prologue and epilogue are sufficiently pedantic, but, 
like the long-drawn narrative, so characteristic, that 
this curious production may be taken as a represent- 
ative poem. A similar bit of realism is the sketch 
of a great poet, seen in every-day life by a fellow- 
townsman, entitled, " How it Strikes a Contempo- 
rary." And now, having selected a few of these 
miscellaneous pieces to represent the mass, how shall 
we define their true value, and their influence upon 
recent art ? 

Browning is justified in offering such works as a 
substitute for poetic treatment of English themes, 



SCHOLASTIC REALISM. 



327 



since he is upon ground naturally his own. Yet as 
poems they fail to move us, and to elevate gloriously 
the soul, but are the outgrowth of minute realism and 
speculation. To quote from .one who is reviewing a 
kindred sort of literature, they sin " against the spirit 
of antiquity, in carrying back the modern analytic 
feeling to a scene where it does not belong." It is 
owing precisely to this sin that several of Browning's 
longer works are literary and rhythmical prodigies, 
monuments of learning and labor rather than enno- 
bling efforts of the imagination. His hand is bur- 
dened by too great accumulation of details, — and 
then there is the ever-present spirit of Robert Brown- 
ing peering from the eyes of each likeness, however 
faithful, that he portrays. 

He is the most intellectual of poets, Tennyson not 
excepted. Take, for example, " Caliban," with its 
text, "Thou thoughtest I was altogether such an one 
as thyself." The motive is a study of anthropomor- 
phism, by reflection of its counterpart in a lower 
animal, half man, half beast, possessed of the faculty 
of speech. The "natural theology" is food for thought; 
the poetry, descriptive and otherwise, realism carried 
to such perfection as to seem imagination. Here we 
have Browning's curious reasoning at its t best. But 
what can be more vulgar and strictly unpoetical than 
" Mr. Sludge, the Medium," a composition of the 
same period ? Our familiarity with such types as 
those to which the author's method is here applied 
enables us to test it with anything but satisfaction. 
Applied to a finer subject, in " Bishop Blougram's 
Apology," we heartily admire its virile analysis of the 
motives actuating the great prelate, who after due 
reflection has rejected 



Defect of 
the fore- 
cited poems. 



Browning '. 
subtilty of 
intellect. 

" Caliban." 



"Mr. 
Sludge.' 



"Bishop 
Blougram. 



328 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



Occasional 
lyrics : 



Their excel- 
lence a?id 
faults. 



"A life of doubt diversified by faith 
For one of faith diversified by doubt." 

Cardinal Wiseman is worldly and insincere \ the 
poet, Gigadibs, is earnest and on the right side ; yet, 
somehow, we do not quite despise the churchman 
nor admire the poet. This piece is at once the fore- 
most defence and arraignment cf Philistinism, drawn 
up by a thinker broad enough to comprehend both 
sides. As an intellectual work, it is meat and wine ; 
as a poem, as a thing of beauty, — but that is quite 
another point in issue. 

Browning's offhand, occasional lyrics, such as " War- 
ing," "Time's Revenges," " Up in a Villa," "The Ital- 
ian in England," " By the Fireside," " The Worst of 
It," etc., are suggestive, and some of them widely 
familiar. His style has been caught by others. The 
picturesqueness and easy rhythm of " The Flight of 
the Duchess," and the touches in briefer lyrics, are 
repeated by minnesingers like Owen Meredith and 
Dobell. There is a grace and turn that still evades 
them, for sometimes their master can be as sweet and 
tuneful as Lodge, or any other of the skylarks. Wit- 
ness " In a Gondola," that delicious Venetian cantata, 
full of music and sweet sorrow, or "One Way of Love," 
for example, — but such melodies are none too fre- 
quent. When he paints nature, as in " Home Thoughts, 
from Abroad," how fresh and fine the landscape ! 

" And after April, when May follows, 
And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows, — 
Hark ! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge 
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 
Blossoms, and dew-drops — at the bent spray's edge — 
That 's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice over. 
Lest you should think he never could recapture 
The first fine careless rapture ! " 



HIS SUGGESTIVENESS. 



329 



Having in mind Shakespeare and Shelley, I neverthe- 
less think the last three lines the finest ever written 
touching the song of a bird. Contrast therewith the 
poet's later method, — the prose-run-mad of stanzas 
such as this : — 

" Hobbs hints blue, — straight he turtle eats. 

Nobbs prints blue, — claret crowns his cup. 
Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats, — 

Both gorge. Who fished the murex up ? 
What porridge had John Keats ? " 

And this by no means the most impertinent of kindred 
verses in his books, — poetry that neither gods nor 
men can endure or understand, and yet interstrewn 
with delicate trifles, such as " Memorabilia," which for 
suggestiveness long will be preserved. Who so deft to 
catch the one immortal moment, the fleeting exqui- 
site word? Who so wont to reach for it, and wholly 
fail? 

VI. 

We come, at last, to a class of Browning's poems 
that I have grouped for their expression of that domi- 
nating sentiment, to which reference was made at the 
beginning of this review. Their moral is that of thej*>*^«^ 
apothegm that " Attractions are proportional to desti- 
nies " ; of rationalistic freedom, as opposed to Calvin- 
ism ; of a belief that the greatest sin does not consist 
in giving rein to our desires, but in stinting or too 
prudently repressing them. Life must have its full 
and free development. And, as love is the master- 
passion, he is most earnest in illustrating this belief 
from its good or evil progress, and to this end has 
composed his most impressive verse. 



j M~ral of his 



330 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



Its subjec- 
tive under- 
tone. 



A main lesson of Browning's emotional poetry is 
that the unpardonable sin is "to dare something 
against nature." To set bounds to love is to commit 
that sin. Through his instinct for conditions which 
engender the most dramatic forms of speech and ac- 
tion, he is, at least, as an artist, tolerant of what is 
called an intrigue ; and that many complacent English 
and American readers do not recognize this, speaks 
volumes either for their stupidity, or for their hypoc- 
risy and inward sympathy in a creed which they pro- 
fess to abhor. Affecting to comprehend and admire 
Browning, they still refuse to forgive Swinburne, — 
whose crude earlier poems brought the lust of the 
flesh to the edge of a grossness too palpable to be 
seductive, and from which his riper manhood has 
departed altogether. The elder poet, from first to 
last, has appeared to defend the elective affinities 
against impediments of law, theology, or social rank. 
It is not my province to discuss the ethics of this 
matter, but simply to speak of it as a fact. 

It will not do to fall back upon Browning's protest, 
in the note to his " Dramatic Lyrics," that these are 
"so many utterances of so many imaginary persons," 
and not his own. For when he returns persistently 
to a certain theme, illustrates it in divers ways, and 
heaps the coals of genius upon it till it breaks out 
into flame, he ceases to be objective and reveals his 
secret thought. No matter how conservative his habit, 
he is to be judged, like any artist, by his work ; and 
in all his poems we see a taste for the joys and sor- 
rows of a. free, irresponsible life, — like that of the 
Italian lovers, of students in their vagrant youth, or 
of Consuelo and her husband upon the windy heath. 
Above all, he tells us : — 



in a balcony: 



331 



"Thou shalt know, those arms once curled 
About thee, what we knew before, 
How love is the only good in the world." 

"In a Balcony" is the longest and finest of his emo- 
tional poems : a dramatic episode, in three dialogues, 
the personages of which talk at too great length, — 
although, no doubt, many and varied thoughts flash 
through the mind at supreme moments, and it is 
Browning's custom to put them all upon the record. 
How clearly the story is wrought ! What exquisite 
language, and passion triumphant over life and death ! 
Mark the transformation of the lonely queen, in the 
one radiant hour of her life that tells her she is be- 
loved, and makes her an angel of goodness and light. 
She barters power and pride for love, clutching at 
this one thing as at Heaven, and feels 

" How soon a smile of God can change the world." 

Then comes the transformation, upon discovery of 
the cruel deceit, — her vengeance and despair. The 
love of Constance, who for it will surrender life, and 
even Norbert's hand, is more unselfish ; never more 
subtly, perhaps, than in this poem, has been illus- 
trated Byron's epigram : — 

" In her first passion, woman loves her lover : 
In all the others, all she loves is love." 

Here, too, is the profound lesson of the whole, that 
a word of the man Norbert's simple, blundering truth 
would have prevented all this coil. But the poet is 
at his height in treating of the master passion : — 

"Remember, I (and what am I to you?) 
Would give up all for one, leave throne, lose life, 
Do all but just unlove him ! he loves me." 



" In a Bal- 
cony." 



332 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



"The Statue 
and the 
Bust." 



With fine abandonment he makes the real worth 
so much more than the ideal : — 

" We live, and they experiment on life, 
These poets, painters, all who stand aloof 
To overlook the farther. Let us be 
The thing they look at ! " 

But in a large variety of minor lyrics it is hinted 
that our instincts have something divine about them ; 
that, regardless of other obligations, we may not dis- 
obey the inward monition. A man not only may for- 
sake father and mother and cleave to his wife ; but 
forsake his wife and cleave to the predestined one. 
No sin like repression ; no sting like regret ; no 
requital for the opportunity slighted and gone by. 
In " The Statue and the Bust," — a typical piece, — 
had the man and woman seen clearly " the end " of 
life, though " a crime," they had not so failed of 
it: — 

"If you choose to play — is my principle! 
Let a man contend to the uttermost 
For his life's set prize, be it what it will ! 

"The counter our lovers staked was lost 
As surely as if it were lawful coin : 
And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost 

"Was, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin. 
Though the end in sight was a crime, I say." 

" A Light Woman " turns upon the right of every 
soul, however despicable, to its own happiness, and 
to freedom from the meddling of others. The words 
of many lyrics, attesting the boundless liberty and 
sovereignty of love, are plainly written, and to say 
the lesson is not there is to ape those commentators 



POETRY ADDRESSED TO HIS WIFE. 



333 



who discover an allegorical meaning in each Scrip- 
tural text that interferes with their special creeds. 

Both Browning and his wife possessed by nature a 
radical gift for sifting things to the core, an heroic 
disregard of every conventional gloss or institution. 
They were thoroughly mated in this respect, though 
one may have outstripped the other in exercise of the 
faculty. Their union, apparently, was so absolute 
that neither felt any need of fuller emotional life. 
The sentiment of Browning's passional verse, there- 
fore, is not the outgrowth of perceptions sharpened 
by restraint. The poetry addressed to his wife is, if 
anything, of a still higher order. He watches her 

" Reading by firelight, that great brow 
And the spirit-small hand propping it 
Mutely — my heart knows how — 

" When, if I think but deep enough, 

You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme " ; 

and again and again addresses her in such lines as 
these : — 

"God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures 
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, 
One to show a woman when he loves her. 

This to you — yourself my moon of poets ! 

Ah, but that's the world's side — there's the wonder — 

Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you." 

In fine, not only his passional lyrics, but all the 
poems relating to the wedded love in which his own 
deepest instincts were thoroughly gratified, are the 
most strong and simple portion of his verse, — show- 
ing that luminous expression is still the product of 
high emotion, as some conceive the diamond to have 
been crystallized by the electric shock. 



Wedded 
poets. 



True passion 
en?iobles art. 



334 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



" Dramatis 
Personce." 



" The Ring 
and the 
Book''' i86g. 



An intel- 
lectual mar- 
vel. 



VII. 

Many of the lyrics in the volume of 1864 are so 
thin and faulty, and so fail to carry out the author's 
intent, — the one great failure in art, — as sadly to 
illustrate the progressive ills which attend upon a 
wrong method. 

The gift still remained, however, for no work dis- 
plays more of ill-diffused power and swift application 
than Browning's longest poem, The Ring and the Book, 
It has been succeeded rapidly, within five years, by 
other works, — the whole almost equalling, in bulk, 
the entire volume of his former writings. Their special 
quality is affluence : limitless wealth of language and 
illustration. They abound in the material of poetry. 
A poet should condense from such star-dust the orbs 
which give light and outlast time. As in " Sordello," 
Browning again fails to do this ; he gives us his 
first draught, — the huge, outlined block, yet to be 
reduced to fit proportions, — the painter's sketch, 
blotchy and too obscure, and of late without the 
early freshness. 

Nevertheless, " The Ring and the Book " is a won- 
derful production, the extreme of realistic art, and 
considered, not without reason, by the poet's admi- 
rers, to be his greatest work. To review it would 
require a special chapter, and I have said enough 
with respect to the author's style in my citation of 
his less extended poems; but as the product of sheer 
intellect this surpasses them all. It is the story of a 
tragedy which took place at Rome one hundred and 
seventy years ago. The poet seems to have found 
his thesis in an old book, — part print, part manu- 
script, — bought for eight pence at a Florence "stall: — 



THE RING AND THE BOOK: 



335 



" A book in shape, but, really, pure crude fact 
Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard, 
And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since." 

The versified narrative of the child Pampilia's sale to 
Count Guido, of his cruelty and violence, of her 
rescue by a young priest, — the pursuit, the lawful 
separation, the murder by Guido of the girl and her 
putative parents, the trial and condemnation of the 
murderer, and the affirmation of his sentence by the 
Pope, — all this is made- to fill out a poem of twenty- 
one thousand lines ; but these include ten different 
versions of the same tale, besides the poet's prelude, 
— in which latter he gives a general outline of it, so 
that the reader plainly may understand it, and the 
historian- then be privileged to wander as he choose. 
The chapters which contain the statements of the 
priest-lover and Pampilia are full of tragic beauty and 
emotion ; the Pope's soliloquy, though too prolonged, 
is a wonderful piece of literary metempsychosis ; but 
the speeches of the opposing lawyers carry realism 
to an intolerable, prosaic extreme. Each of these 
books, possibly, should be read by itself, and not too 
steadily nor too often. Observe that the author, in 
elevated passages, sometimes forgets his usual manner 
and breaks into the cadences of Tennyson's style; for 
instance, the apostrophe to his dead wife, beginning 

"O lyric Love, half angel and half bird, 
And all a wonder and a wild desire ! " 

But elsewhere he still leads the reaction from the 
art-school. His presentations are endless : in his ar- 
chitecture the tracery, scroll-work, and multifoil be- 
wilder us and divert attention from the main design. 
Yet in presence of the changeful flow of his verse, 



Outline of 
the poem. 



The style oj 
certain pas- 
sages. 



336 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



" Balans- 
tion's A d- 
venture ," 
1871. 



" Fifine at 
the Fair,'''' 
1872. 



and the facility wherewith he records the speculations 
of his various characters, we are struck with wonder. 
" The Ring and the Book " is thus far imaginative, 
and a rhythmical marvel, but is it a stronghold of 
poetic art ? As a whole, we cannot admit that it is ; 
and yet the thought, the vocabulary, the imagery, the 
wisdom, lavished upon this story, would equip a score 
of ordinary writers, and place them beyond danger of 
neglect. 

Balaustioii's Adventure, the poet's next volume, dis- 
plays a tranquil beauty uncommon in his verse, and 
it seems as if he sought, after his most prolonged 
effort, to refresh his mind with the sweetness and 
repose of Greek art. He treads decently and rever- 
ently in the buskins of Euripides, and forgets to be 
garrulous in his chaste semi-translation of the Alcestis. 
The girl Balaustion's prelude and conclusion are very 
neatly turned, reminding us of Landor ; nor does the 
book, as a whole, lack the antique flavor and the 
blue, laughing freshness of the Trinacrian sea. 

What shall be said of Fifine at the Fair, or of that 
volume, the last but one of Browning's essays, which 
not long ago succeeded it? Certainly, that they ex- 
hibit his steadfast tendency to produce work that is 
less and less poetical. There is no harder reading 
than the first of these poems; no more badly chosen, 
rudely handled measure than the verse selected for 
it ; no pretentious work, from so great a pen, has less 
of the spirit of grace and comeliness. It is a pity 
that the author has not somewhat accustomed himself 
to write in prose, for he insists upon recording all of 
his thoughts, and many of them are essentially pro- 
saic. Strength and subtilty are not enough in art : 
beauty, either of the fair, the terrible, or the gro- 



HIS LATER PRODUCTIONS. 



337 



tesque, is its justification, and a poem that repels at 
the outset has small excuse for being. " Prince 
Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Savior of Society," is another 
of Browning's experiments in vivisection, the subject 
readily made out to be the late Emperor of the 
French. It is longer than " Bishop Blougram's Apol- 
ogy," but compare it therewith, and we are forced to 
perceive a decline in terseness, virility, and true im- 
aginative power. 

Red Cotton Night-Cap Country; or, Turf and Towers, 
— what exasperating titles Browning puts forth ! this 
time under the protection of Miss Thackeray. That 
the habit is inbred, however, is proved by some ab- 
surd invention whenever it becomes necessary to coin 
a proper name. After " Bluphocks " and " Gigadibs," 
we have no right to complain of the title of his 
Breton romance. The poem itself contains a melo- 
dramatic story, and hence is less uninteresting than 
" Fifine." But to have such a volume, after Brown- 
ing's finer works, come out with each revolving year, 
is enough to extort from his truest admirers the 
cry of " Words ! Words ! Words ! " Much of the 
detail is paltry, and altogether local or temporal, so 
that it will become inexplicable fifty years hence. 
There is a constant " dropping into " prose ; more- 
over, whole pages of wandering nonsense are called 
forth by some word, like " night-cap " or " fiddle," 
taken for a text, as if to show the poet's mastery of 
verse-building and how contemptible he can make it. 
Once he would have put the narrative of this poem 
into a brief dramatic sketch that would have had 
beauty and interest. " My Last Duchess " is a more 
genuine addition to literature than the two hundred 
pages of this tedious and affected romance. A pro- 
i5 v 



"Prince 
Hohenstiel- 
Schwan- 
gau" 



"Red Cot- 
ton Night- 
Cap Coun- 
try," 1873. 



Decline in 
poetic value, 



338 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



"Aristopha- 
nes' Apol- 
ogy,'" 1875. 



Final esti- 
mate of this 
poet. 



Most origi- 
nal and 
unequal. 



longed career has not been of advantage to the 
reputation of Browning : his tree was well-rooted and 
reached a sturdy growth, but the yield is too profuse, 
of a fruit that still grows sourer from year to year. 

Nevertheless, this poet, like all men of genius, has 
happy seasons in which, by some remarkable per- 
formance, he seems to renew his prime. Aristopha- 
nes' Apology continues the charm of " Balaustion's 
Adventure," to which poem it is a sequel. What I 
have said of the classical purity and sweetness of 
the earlier production will apply to portions of " the 
last adventure of Balaustion," — which also includes 
" a transcript from Euripides." Besides, it displays 
the richness of scholarship, command of learned de- 
tails, skill in sophistry and analysis, power to recall, 
awaken, and dramatically inform the historic past, in 
all which qualifications this master still remains un- 
equalled by any modern writer, even by the most 
gifted and affluent pupil of his own impressive school. 

VIII. 

A fair estimate of Browning may, I think, be de- 
duced from the foregoing review of his career. It 
is hard to speak of one whose verse is a metrical 
paradox. I have called him the most original and 
the most unequal of living poets ; he continually 
descends to a prosaic level, but at times is elevated 
to the Laureate's highest flights. Without realizing 
the proper functions of art, he nevertheless sympa- 
thizes with the joyous liberty of its devotees; his life 
may be conventional, but he never forgets the Latin 
Quarter, and often celebrates that freedom in love 
and song which is the soul of Beranger's 



LAW AND LAWLESSNESS IN ART. 



339 



"Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a. vingt ans." 

Then, too, what working man of letters does not thank 
him when he says, — 

"But you are of the trade, my Puccio ! 
You have the fellow-craftsman's sympathy. 
There 's none knows like a fellow of the craft 
The all unestimated sum of pains 
That go to a success the world can see." 

He is an eclectic, and will not be restricted in his 
themes ; on the other hand, he gives us too gross a 
mixture of poetry, fact, and metaphysics, appearing 
to have no sense of composite harmony, but to revel 
in arabesque strangeness and confusion. He has a 
barbaric sense of color and lack of form. Striving 
against the trammels of verse, he really is far less a 
master of expression than others who make less re- 
sistance. We read in " Pippa Passes " : " If there 
should arise a new painter, will it not be in some 
such way by a poet, now, or a musician (spirits who 
have conceived and perfected an Ideal through some 
other channel), transferring it to this, and escaping 
our conventional roads by pure ignorance of them ? " 
This is the Pre-Raphaelite idea, and, so far, good ; 
but Browning's fault is that, if he has "conceived," he 
certainly has made no effort to "perfect" an Ideal. 

And here I wish to say, — and this is something 
which, soon or late, every thoughtful poet must dis- 
cover, — that the structural exigencies of art, if one 
adapts his genius to them, have a beneficent reaction 
upon the artist's original design. By some friendly 
law they help the work to higher excellence, suggest- 
ing unthought-of touches, and refracting, so to speak, 
the single beam of light in rays of varied and delight- 
ful beauty. 



A true fel- 
low-crafts- 
man. 



Rich, yet 
barbaric 
taste. 



The limits 
of freedom 



Their benef- 
ce7it reaction 
upo?i the art- 
ist's work. 



340 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



Ultimate re- 
sults of law- 
lessness. 



Browning 1 s 
minute dra- 
matic in- 
sight. 



The brakes which art applies to the poet's move- 
ment not only regulate, but strengthen its progress. 
Their absence is painfully evinced by the mass of 
Browning's unread verse. Works like " Sordello " and 
" Fifine," however intellectual, seem, like the removal 
of the Malvern Hills, a melancholy waste of human 
power. When some romance like the last-named 
comes from his pen, — an addition in Volume, not in 
quality, to what he has done before, — I feel a sad- 
ness like that engendered among hundreds of gloomy 
folios in some black-letter alcove : books, forever closed, 
over which the mighty monks of old wore out their 
lives, debating minute points of casuistic theology, 
though now the very memory of their discussions has 
passed away. Would that Browning might take to 
heart his own words, addressed, in "Transcendental- 
ism," to a brother-poet : — 

" Song \s our art : 
Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts 
Instead of draping them in sights and sounds. 
— True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up ! 
But why such long prolusion and display, 
Such turning and adjustment of the harp ? 

But here 's your fault ; grown men want thought, you think ; 

Thought 's what they mean by verse, and seek in verse : 

Boys seek for images and melody, 

Men must have reason, — so you aim at men. 

Quite otherwise ! " 

Incidentally we have noted the distinction between 
the drama of Browning and that of the absolute 
kind, observing that his characters reflect his own 
mental traits, and that their action and emotion are 
of small moment compared with the speculations to 
which he makes them all give voice. Still, he has 



ULTIMATE STANDING AS A POET. 



341 



dramatic insight, and a minute power of reading other 
men's hearts. His moral sentiment has a potent and 
subtile quality : — through his early poems he really 
founded a school, and had imitators, and, although 
of his later method there are few, the younger poets 
whom he has most affected very naturally began work 
by carrying his philosophy to a startling yet perfectly 
logical extreme. 

Much of his poetry is either very great or very 
poor. It has been compared to Wagner's music, and 
entitled the "poetry of the future " ; but if this be just, 
then we must revise our conception of what poetry 
really is. The doubter incurs the contemptuous en- 
mity of two classes of the dramatist's admirers : first, 
of the metaphysical, who disregard considerations of 
passion, melody, and form ; secondly, of those who 
are sensitive to their master's failings, but, in view of 
his greatness, make it a point of honor to defend 
them. That greatness lies in his originality ; his 
error, arising from perverseness or congenital defect, 
is the violation of natural and beautiful laws. This 
renders his longer poems of less worth than his lyri- 
cal studies, while, through avoidance of it, produc- 
tions, differing as widely as "The Eve of St. Agnes" 
and " In Memoriam,'' will outlive " The Ring and the 
Book." In writing of Arnold I cited his own quota- 
tion of Goethe's distinction between the dilettanti, who 
affect genius and despise art, and those who respect 
their calling though not gifted with high creative power. 
Browning escapes the limitations of the latter class, 
but incurs the reproach visited upon the former ; and 
by -his contempt of beauty, or inability to surely ex- 
press it, fails of that union of art and spiritual power 
which always characterizes a poet "entirely great." 



The "poetry 
of the fu- 
ture." 



What con- 
stitutes trw 
greatness in 
art. 



CHAPTER X. 
LATTER-DAY SINGERS. 

ROBERT BUCHANAN. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 

WILLIAM MORRIS. 



A new de- 
parture. 



The latter- 
day poets. 



THROUGHOUT the recent poetry of Great Brit- 
ain a new departure is indicated, and there are 
signs that the true Victorian era has nearly reached 
a close. To speak more fully, we approach the end 
of that time in which — although a composite school 
has derived its models from all preceding forms — 
the idyllic method, as represented by Tennyson, upon 
the whole has prevailed, and has been more success- 
ful than in earlier times, and than contemporary 
efforts in the higher scale of song. 

All periods are transitional ; yet it may be said 
that the calling of the British poets, during the last 
fifteen years, has been a " struggle," not so much for 
recognition, as for the vital influence which consti- 
tutes a genuine " existence." The latter-day singers, 
who bear a special relation to the immediate future, 
are like those priests of the Sun, who, on hills over- 
looking the temples of strange gods, and above the 
tumult of a hostile nation, tend the sacred fire, in 
presence of their band of devotees, and wait for the 
coming of a fairer day. Not that the blood of Eng- 



A CONFLICT OF INTERESTS. 



343 



lishmen is more frigid, and their wants more sordid, 
than of old. The time is sufficiently imaginative. 
Love of excitement, the most persistent of human 
motives, is strong as ever. But the sources are vari- 
ous which now supply to the imagination that stimu- 
lus for which the new generation otherwise might 
resort to poetry. It is an age of journalism ; all the 
acts of all the world are narrated by the daily press. 
It is, we have seen, a time of criticism and scholar- 
ship, similar to the Alexandrian period of Greek 
•thought. It is the very noontide of imaginative work 
in prose ; and so largely have great novelists sup- 
planted the poets in general regard, that annalists 
designate the Victorian period as the " age of prose 
romance." Finally, and notably within the last dec- 
ade, readers have been confronted with those won- 
ders of science which have a double effect, — destroy- 
ing the old poetic diction and imagery, and elevating 
the soul with beauty and sublimity beyond anything 
proffered by verse of the idyllic kind. The poets — 
especially Tennyson, in his recognition of modern 
science and the new theology — have tried to meet 
the exigency, but their efforts have been timid and 
hardly successful. Their art, though noble and re- 
fined, rarely has swayed the multitude, or even led 
the literary progress of the time, — that which verse 
was wont to do in the great poetic epochs. Year by 
year these adverse conditions have been more se- 
verely felt. To the latest poets, I say, the situation 
is so oppressive that there is reason to believe it 
must be near an end, and hence we see them striv- 
ing to break through and out of the restrictions that 
surround them. 

Where is the point of exit ? This is the problem 



Their em- 
barrass- 
ments. 



Cp." Poets 
of Amer- 
ica " : p. 
437- 



344 



LATTER-DAY SINGERS. 



Remedial 
efforts. 



Need of a 
dramatic 
revival. 
Cp. " Poets 
of A mer- 
ica "' .• pp. 
4.66-469. 



which, singly or in groups, they are trying, perhaps 
unconsciously, to solve. Some return to a purely 
natural method, applying it to scenes whose fresh- 
ness and simplicity may win attention ; others with- 
draw to the region of absolute art, and by new and 
studied forms of constructive beauty gratify their own 
taste, and at least secure a delight in labor which, 
of itself, is full compensation. Some have applied 
poetic investigation to the spiritual themes which 
float like shadows among the pillars and arches of 
recent materialism ; finally, all are agreed in attempt- 
ing to infuse with more dramatic passion the over- 
cultured method of the day. 

In this last endeavor I am sure their instinct is 
right. Modern art has carried restraint and breeding 
below the level of repose. Poetry, to recover its 
station, must shake off its luxurious sleep : the Phi- 
listines are upon it. It must stimulate feeling, arouse 
to life, love, and action, before there can be a true 
revival of its ancient power. 

It would be invidious to lay any stress upon the 
fact that the body of recent English verse is supplied 
by those smaller lyrists, who, the poet tells us, never 
weary of singing the old eternal song. Socialists 
avow that Nature is unerring in the distribution of 
her groups. Among a thousand men are so many 
natural farmers, so many mechanics, a number of 
scholars, two or three musicians, — a single philan- 
thropist, it may be. But we search groups of a hun- 
dred thousand for a tolerable poet, and of a million 
for a good one. The inspired are in the proportion 
of diamonds to amethysts, of gold to iron. If, in the 
generation younger than Tennyson and the Brown- 
ings, we discover three or four singers fit to aspire 



REPRESENTATIVE NAMES. 



345 



and lead the way, especially at this stage of compe- 
tition with science and prose romance, there surely is 
no need that we should wholly despair. 

I have spoken elsewhere of the minor poets, and of 
those specialists who excel in dialect-writing and so- 
ciety-verse, and have derived from their miscellaneous 
productions an idea of the tone and fashion of the 
period. As we seek for those who are distinguished, 
not only by power and individuality, but by the impor- 
tance of their accomplished work, three or four, at 
most, require specific attention. Another year, and 
the position may be changed ; for poets are like com- 
ets in the suddenness of their appearance, and too 
often also in brief glory, hyperbolic orbit, and abrupt 
departure to be seen no more. 

Of the four whose names most readily occur to the 
mind, — Buchanan, Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne, 
— the first holds an isolated position ; the remaining 
three, though their gifts are entirely distinctive, have 
an appearance of association through sympathy in 
taste or studies, — so that, while to classify them as 
a school might be unphilosophical, to think of one is 
to recall the others. Such a group is not without 
precedent. It is not for this cause that I include the 
thtee under one review ; if it were so, Buchanan, from 
his antagonistic position, well might be placed else- 
where. The fact is, that all are latter-day poets, and 
need not object to meet on the footing of guests in 
the house of a common friend. With the exception of 
Rossetti, these later poets are alike in at least one 
respect : they are distinguished from the Farringford 
school by a less condensed, more affluent order of 
work, — are prodigal of their verse, pouring it out in 
youth, and flooding the ear with rhythm. There is 
IS* 



Representa- 
tive names. 



34^ 



ROBERT BUCHANAN. 



Robert Bu- 
chanan : 
bjrn in Scot- 
land, Aztg. 
18, 1841. 



His temper- 
ament. 



no nursing of couplets, and so fruitful a yield may be 
taken as the evidence of a rich and fertile soil. 



II. 

Judged either by his verse or by his critical writings, 
Robert Buchanan seems to have a highly developed 
poetic temperament, with great earnestness, strength 
of conviction, and sensitiveness to points of right and 
wrong. Upon the whole, he represents, possibly more 
than any other rising man, the Scottish element in 
literature, — an element that stubbornly retains its char- 
acteristics, just as Scotch blood manages to hold its 
own through many changes of emigration, intermar- 
riage, or long descent. The most prosaic Scotsman 
has something of the imagination and warmth of feel- 
ing that belong to a poet; the Scottish minstrel has 
the latter quality, at least, to an extent beyond ordi- 
nary comprehension. He wears his heart upon his 
sleeve ; his naivete and self-consciousness subject him 
to charges of egotism ; he has strong friends but 
makes as many enemies by tilting against other peo- 
ple's convictions, and by zealous advocacy of his own. 

It is difficult for such a man to confine himself to 
pure art, and Buchanan is no exception to the rule. 
He is a Scotsman all over, and not only in push and 
aggressiveness, but, let me add, in versatility, in gen- 
uine love and knowledge of nature, and in his reli- 
gious aspiration. The latter does not manifest itself 
through allegiance to any traditional belief, but through 
a spirit of individual inquiry, resulting in speculations 
which he advances with all the fervor of Knox or 
Chalmers, and thus furnishes another illustration of 
the saying that every Scot has a creed of his own 



A PUPIL OF WORDSWORTH. 



347 



Great Britain can well afford to tolerate the meta- 
physics of Scotland for the sake of her poetry. Bu- 
chanan's transcendentalism is mentioned here, because 
he has made his verse its exponent, and thus, in his 
chosen quest after the knowledge of good and evil, has 
placed himself apart from the other poets of his time. 

The library edition of his writings, recently issued, 
does not exhibit accurately the progress of his growth. 
The poems are not arranged in the order of their 
composition, but upon a system adapted to the au- 
thor's taste. In their perusal this is not the only 
feature to remind us of Wordsworth, whose arbitrary 
classification of his works is familiar to all. Both the 
early and the later writings of Buchanan show that 
much of his tutelage came from a youthful study of 
the bard of Rydal Mount, and he thus took a bent 
in a direction quite separate from that of the modern 
art-school. What he gained in freedom he lost in 
reserve, • acquiring Wordsworth's gravest fault, — the 
habit of versifying every thought that comes to mind. 
A useful mission of the art-school has been to correct 
this tendency. Like Wordsworth, also, Buchanan is 
a natural sonneteer and idyllist, and he resembles the 
whole Lake school in the Orphic utterance of his 
opinions upon half the questions that fill the air. 
Hence some notable mistakes and beliefs, subject 
to revision ; hence, also, ill-conceived and spasmodic 
work, like the " Napoleon Fallen " and " The Drama 
of Kings," of which I believe that only a select 
portion has been retained in a new edition of this 
author's works. 

Thus Robert Buchanan is one of the least restrained 
and most unequal of the younger poets ; yet he is to 
be placed by himself on the ground of his decided 



His writ- 
ings. 



Influence 
of Words- 
worth and 
the Lake 
school. 



A n isolated 
position. 



348 



ROBERT BUCHANAN. 



" Under- 
tones," i860. 



" Idyls and 
Legends of 
Inverburn" 
1865. 



purpose and originality. What he lacks is the faculty 
of restraint Stimulated, it may be, by his quick suc- 
cess, he has printed a great quantity of verse since 
the day, fourteen years ago, when David Gray and 
himself first started for London. That portion which 
is most carefully finished is, also, the freshest and 
most original; showing either that in his case the 
labor limce is not thrown away, or else that, if the 
ruggedness of certain pieces is its result, he should 
have left them as they came from his brain. Of 
course his early efforts were experiments in verse 
rather than new and sweet pipings of his own. JJjider- 
to?ies consisted chiefly of classical studies, — a kind of 
work, I should say, apart from his natural turn, and 
in which he was not very successful. We do not 
find the true classical spirit in " Pan," nor in " The 
Last Song of Apollo," good as both these pieces are 
in a certain way. " Polypheme's Passion," imitated 
from Euripides and Theocritus, is nearer the mark. 
The strength, precision, and beauty of the antique 
are what evade him. After Keats, Landor, Tennyson, 
and Arnold, his classicism is no real addition to work 
of this kind in English poetry. 

Five years later his Scottish idyls and legends 
showed the touch and feeling of the real poet. 
They introduced us to scenes and language before 
almost unstudied, and were affecting, truthful, and 
picturesque. His songs of Lowland superstition are 
light with fancy, and sometimes musical as the chim- 
ing of glass bells. The Inverburn tales, in rhymed- 
heroic and blank verse, were rightly named idyls. 
They are exquisite pictures of humble life, more full 
of dialogue and incident than Wordsworth's, broader 
in treatment than Tennyson's ; in short, composed in 



A FAITHFUL POET OF NATURE. 



349 



their author's own style, and transcripts of the man- 
ners and landscape which he best knew. Few poems 
have more fairly deserved their welcome than " Willie 
Baird," "Poet Andrew," "John" ("The English Hus- 
wife's Gossip "), and " The Widow Mysie." Buchanan 
justly may be pronounced the most faithful poet of 
Nature among the new men. He is her familiar, and 
in this respect it would seem as if the mantle of Words- 
worth had fallen to him from some fine sunset or misty 
height. He knows the country with that knowledge 
which is gained only in youth. Like an American 
poet, and like no British poet save himself, he knows 
the hills and valleys, the woods and rippling trout- 
streams. An artist is apt to underrate his special gift. 
Buchanan is said to place more value upon his town- 
poems ; yet they do not affect us as these rural studies 
do, and the persons he best describes are those found 
in bucolic life. His four " Pastoral Pictures " rank 
with the pastorals of Bryant and Wordsworth in being 
so imaginative as to have the charm of more dramatic 
poems. " A Summer Pool " and " Up the River " are 
full of excellence. The following lines, taken almost 
at random, show w T hat poetic beauty can be reached 
in purely descriptive verse : — 

"The air is hotter here. The bee booms by 
With honey-laden thigh, 
Doubling the heat with sounds akin to heat ; 

And like a floating flower the butterfly 
Swims upward, downward, till its feet 
Cling to the hedge-rows white and sweet. 

The sunlight fades on mossy rocks, 
And on the mountain-sides the flocks 

Are spilt like streams ; — the highway dips 
Down, narrowing to the path where lambs 



Fidelity to 
Nature. 



Pastoral 
verse. 



350 



ROBERT BUCHANAN. 



Lay to the udders of their dams 

Their soft and pulpy lips. 
The hills grow closer ; to the right 
The path sweeps round a shadowy bay, 
Upon whose slated fringes white 
And crested wavelets play. 
All else is still. But list, O list! 
Hidden by bowlders and by mist, 
A shepherd whistles in his fist; 
From height to height the far sheep bleat 
In answering iteration sweet. 
Sound, seeking Silence, bends above her, 
Within some haunted mountain grot; 
Kisses her, like a trembling lover, — 
So that she stirs in sleep, but wakens not!" 

As a writer of Scottish idyls, Buchanan was strictly 
within his limitations, and secure from rivalry. There 
is no dispute concerning a specialist, but a host will 
rebuke the claims of one who aims at universal suc- 
cess, and would fain, like the hard-handed man of 
Athens, play all parts at once. The young poet, how- 
ever, having so well availed himself of these home- 
scenes, certainly had warrant for attempting other 
labors than those of a mere genre painter in verse. 
He took from the city various subjects for his maturer 
work, treating these and his North-coast pictures in 
a more realistic fashion, discarding adornment, and 
letting his art teach its lesson by fidelity to actual 
life. A series of the lighter city-poems, suggested by 
early experiences in town, and entitled "London Lyr- 
ics" in the edition of 1874, is not in any way remark- 
able. The lines " To the Luggie " are a more poetical 
tribute to his comrade, Gray, than is the lyric "To 
David in Heaven." For poems of a later date he 
made studies from the poor of London and it required 
some courage to set before his comfortable readers 



LONDON POEMS? 



351 



the wretchedness of the lowest classes, — to introduce 
their woful phantoms at the poetic feast. " Nell " 
and " Liz " have the unquestionable power of truth ; 
they are faithfully, even painfully, realistic. The metre 
is purposely irregular, that nothing may cramp the 
language or blur the scene. "Nell" — the plaint of 
a creature whose husband has just been hanged for 
murder, and who, over the corpse of her still-born 
babe, tells the story of her misery and devotion — is 
stronger than its companion-piece ; but each is the 
striking expression of a woman's anguish put in rug- 
ged and impressive verse. "Meg Blane," among the 
North-coast pieces, is Buchanan's longest example of 
a similar method applied to a rural theme. I do him 
no wrong by not quoting from any one of these pro- 
ductions, whose force lies in their general effect, and 
which are composed in a manner directly opposite to 
that of the elaborate modern school. 

As a presentment of something new and strong, 
these are remarkable poems. Nevertheless, and grant- 
ing that propagandism is a legitimate' mission of art, 
does not that poetry teach the most effectually which 
is the most attractive to a poet's audience ? Have 
the great evangelists kept their hearers in an exalted 
state of anguish without frequent intermissions of 
relief? Hogarth, in his realistic pictures of low life, 
followed nature, and made their wretchedness endur- 
able by seizing upon every humorous or grotesque 
point that could be made. " Nell," " Liz," and " Meg 
Blane " harrow us from first to last ; there is no re- 
mission, — the poet is inexorable; the pain is contin- 
uous ; we are willing to accept these lessons, but 
would be spared from others of the same cast. 

Better as a poem, more tempting in its graphic 



Their mer- 
its and de- 
fects. 



352 



ROBERT BUCHANAN. 



A beautiful 
idyl. 



Humor. 



" The Book 

ofOrm," 

1870. 



pictures of coast-life and brave sailorly forms, more 
pathetic as a narrative, and told in verse at once 
sturdier and more sweet, is that dramatic and beauti- 
ful idyl, "The Scairth o' Bartle," in which we find a 
union of naturalism and realism at their best. The 
lesson is just as impressive as that of " Meg Blane," 
and the verse — how tender and strong! I think that 
other poets, of the rhetorical sort, might have written 
the one, while Buchanan alone could have so ren- 
dered the Scottish-sailor dialect of the other, and 
have given to its changeful scenery and detail those 
fine effects which warrant us in placing "The Scairth 
o' Bartle " at the high-water mark of the author's 
North-coast poems. 

Among other realistic studies, " Edward Crowhurst " 
and " Jane Lawson " will repay attention. That this 
poet has humor of the Tam-o'-Shanter kind is shown 
in the racy sketch of Widow Mysie, and by the Eng- 
lish a.nd Scottish Eclogues. He also has done good 
work after Browning's lighter manner, of which " De 
Berny " (a life-like study of a French refugee in 
London) and " Kitty Kemble " may be taken as ex- 
amples. The latter, by its flowing satire, reminds us 
of Swift, but is mellowed with the kindness and char- 
ity which redeem from cynicism the wit of a true 
poet. The ease and grace of these two poems are 
very noticeable. 

It is in another direction that Buchanan has made 
his decided revolt against the modes and canons of 
the period. The Book of Orm invites us to a spirit- 
ual region, where fact and materialism cannot hamper 
his imaginings. To many it will seem that, in tak- 
ing metaphysics with him, he but exchanges one set 
of hindrances for another. It is a natural outcome 



THE BOOK OF ORM: 



353 



of his Scottish genius that he should find himself 
discussing the nature of evil, and applying mysticism 
to the old theological problems. The " Book " itself 
is hard to describe, being a study of the meaning of 
good and evil, as observed through a kind of Celtic 
haze ; and even the author, to explain his own pur- 
pose, resorts to the language of a friendly critic, who 
pronounces it "a striking attempt to combine a quasi- 
Ossianic treatment of nature with a philosophy of 
rebellion rising into something like a Pantheistic 
vision of the necessity of evil." The poet himself 
adds that to him its whole scope is "to vindicate the 
ways of God to Man [sic]." He thus brings the 
great instance of Milton to sustain his propagandism, 
but while poetry, written with such intent, may be 
sensuous, and often is passionate, it never can be 
entirely simple. The world has well agreed that 
what is fine in " Paradise Lost " is the poetry ; what 
is tiresome, the theology; yet the latter certainly fur- 
nished the motive of England's greatest epic. In 
adopting a theme which, after all, is didactics under 
a spiritual glamour, Buchanan has Chosen a distinc- 
tive ground. The question is, What sort of art is the 
result ? Inevitably a strange mixture of poetry and 
prose, — the relative proportions varying with the flow 
of the poet's imagination. " The Book of Orm " is 
largely made up of vague aspiration, rhetoric, padded 
and unsatisfactory verse. It contains, withal, very 
fine poetry, of which one or two specimens are as 
good as anything the author has composed. A por- 
tion of the work has a trace of the weird quality to 
be found in nearly all of Blake's pictures, and in most 
of his verse. The " Soul and Flesh," the " Flower of 
the World," and the " Drinkers of Hemlock " are thus 



Transcen- 
dental and 
lacking sint' 
plicity ; 



but fine here 
and there. 



354 



ROBERT BUCHANAN. 



"Napoleon 
Fallen" and 
the "Drama 
of Kings " 
1871. 



characterized. Two episodes are prominent among 
the rest. "The Dream of the World without Death" 
is a strong and effective poem : a vision of the time 
when 

"There were no kisses on familiar faces, 
No weaving of white grave-clothes, no lost pondering 
Over the still wax cheeks and folded fingers. 

"There was no putting tokens under pillows, 
There was no dreadful beauty slowly fading, 
Fading like moonlight softly into darkness. 

"There were no churchyard paths to walk on, thinking 
How near the well-beloved ones are lying. 
There were no sweet green graves to sit and muse on, 

" Till grief should grow a summer meditation, 
The shadow of the passing of an angel, 
And sleeping should seem easy, and not cruel. 

"Nothing but wondrous parting and a blankness." 

Of a still higher order is " The Vision of the Man 
Accurst," which is marked by fine imagination, though 
conceits and artificial phrases somewhat lessen its 
effect. It seems to me the poet's strongest produc- 
tion thus far, and holds among his mystical pieces 
the position of " The Scairth o' Bartle " among the 
Scottish tales. 

In applying the Orphic method to contemporary 
politics he makes a failure akin to that of Shelley 
in "The Revolt of Islam." Having perceived the 
weakness of his poems upon the Franco-German war, 
he gives them to us under new titles, and largely 
pruned or otherwise remodelled. Much of the politi- 
cal verse is written in a mouthing manner, inferior 
to his narrative style. The aspiration of Shelley's 



HIS VERSATILITY. 



355 



writings doubtless went far to sustain the melody 
that renders them so exquisite. Whatever Buchanan's 
mission may be, it detracts from, rather than en- 
hances, his genius as a poet. In reformatory lyrics 
and sonnets he does not rise so very far above the 
level of Massey and other spasmodic rhymesters. An 
American, living in a country where every mechanic 
is the peer of Buchanan as a reformer, and where 
poetry is considerably scarcer than " progress," is 
likely to care not so much for a singer's theories as 
for the quality of his song. 

Buchanan's versatility, and desire to obtain a hear- 
ing in every province of his art, have impelled him 
to some curious ventures, among which are two ro- 
mantic volumes upon American themes, published 
anonymously, but now acknowledged as his own. St. 
Abe and White Rose and Red have been commended 
for fidelity of local color and diction, but readers to 
the manner born will assure the author that he has 
succeeded only in being faithful to a British ideal of 
American frontier life. To compensate us, we have 
some thin poetry in his Maine romance, while in the 
Salt Lake extravaganza I can find none at all. His 
critical prose-writings are marked by eloquence and 
vigor, but those of a polemical order have, I should 
opine, entailed upon him more vexation than profit. 
He is said to figure creditably as a playwright, "The 
Witch-Finder " and " The Madcap Prince " having 
met with success upon the London stage. 

As a result of his impulse to handle every theme 
that occurs to him, and to essay all varieties of style, 
much of his poetry, even after the winnowing to 
which it has been subjected, is not free from sterile 
and prosaic chaff. A lesser fault is the custom of 



"St. Abe," 
1871. 

" White 
Rose and 
Red.;'' 1873. 



Prose writ- 
ings. 



Stage-plays. 



Faults of 
judgment 
and style. 



356 



ROBERT BUCHANAN. 



A n impres- 
sive ballad. 



The past 
vndfuttire. 



handicapping his pieces with affected preludes, and 
his volumes with metrical statements of their purpose, 
— barbarisms taken from a period when people did 
not clearly see that Art must stand without crutches. 
Occasionally a theme which he selects, such as the 
description from Heine's " Reisebilder" of the vanish- 
ing of the old gods, is more of a poem than any 
verses that can be set to it. Nor do we care for 
such an excess of self-annunciation as is found in 
the prelude to " Bexhill." Faults of style are less 
common, yet he does not wholly escape the affecta- 
tions of a school with which he is in open conflict. 
Still, he can be artistic to a degree not exceeded in 
the most careful poetry of his time. "The Ballad of 
Judas Iscariot," which he has done well to place at 
the opening of his collection, is equal in finish to 
anything written since "The Rime of the Ancient 
Mariner," and approaches that poem in weird impres- 
siveness and power. Among his sonnets, those of 
the Coruisken series, sustained by lofty feeling and 
noble diction, are without doubt the best. 

In conclusion, it would appear that his work of the 
last five years is not an advance upon his Scottish 
idyls, and that a natural and charming poet has been 
retarded by conceiving an undue sense of his inspi- 
ration as a seer, a mystic, a prophet of the future. 
Moreover, like Southey, Buchanan has somewhat too 
carefully nursed his reputation. The sibyls confided 
their leaves to the winds, and knew that nothing 
which the gods thought worth preserving could be 
effaced by the wanton storm. His merits lie in his 
originality, earnestness, and admirable understanding 
of nature, in freedom of style and strength of gen- 
eral effect. His best poetry grows upon the reader. 



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTL 



357 



He still is young, scarcely having begun the mature 
creative period, and, if he will study the graces of 
restraint, and cling to some department of art in 
which he is easily foremost, should not fail of a new 
and still more successful career. 



III. 

Rossetti is one of those men whose significant 
position is not so much due to the amount of work 
which they produce as to its quality, and to the prin- 
ciples it has suggested. Such leaders often are found, 
and influence contemporary thought by the personal 
magnetism that attracts young and eager spirits to 
gather around them. Sometimes a man of this kind, 
in respect to creative labor, is greater than his pro- 
ductions. But if Rossetti's special attitude has been 
of more account than his poetry, it is not because 
he lacks the power to equalize the two. He has 
chosen to give his energies to a kindred art of ex- 
pression, for which his genius is no less decided. 
Yet his influence as a poet, judging from his writ- 
ings, and from even a meagre knowledge of his life 
and associates, seems to be radical and more or less 
enduring. 

A stream broadens as it flows. Already, in the 
careers of Morris and Swinburne, we see the forms 
of extension through which the indestructibility of 
nature is secured for a specific mode of art. The 
instinct is not so far wrong which connects these 
poets with Rossetti, and calls the circle by his name. 
Three men could not be more independent of one 
another in their essential gifts ; yet there is some 
common chain between them to which the clew most 



Dante Ga- 
briel Ros- 
setti: born 
in London, 
May 12, 
1828. 



His distinc- 
tive force 
and attitude. 



Comrades 
in art. 



358 



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 



Recent poe- 
try and the 
arts of de- 
sign. 



Pre-Raph- 

aelitism '. its 
use and 
abuse. 



likely was obtained first by Rossetti, — he being the 
eldest, and the first to seize it in his search after 
beauty's underlying laws. It is true that Morris, a 
comrade near his own age, dedicated a book of poe- 
try to him long before the artist had compiled a 
volume of his own poems ; nevertheless, we gather 
the idea that the conversation and presence of Ros- 
setti had a formative influence upon the author of 
"The Earthly Paradise," as well as upon that younger 
singer whose dramatic genius already has half deter- 
mined what is to be the poetic tendency of the era 
now beginning. We turn to the young for confirma- 
tion of our views with regard to the immediate out- 
look ; for it is the privilege of youth to discern the 
freshest and most potential style. A prophetic sen- 
sitiveness, wiser than the dulled experience of age, 
unites it to the party of the future. 

Since the master treatise of Lessing there has been 
no question of the impassable barriers betwixt the 
provinces of the artist and the poet. Poetry, however, 
furnishes themes to the painter ; and of late, painting, 
through study of elemental processes, has enriched 
the field of poetry, — to which Rossetti's contribution 
is the latest, if not the greatest, and has the charm of 
something rare that is brought to us from another 
land. He was an early member of the Pre-Raphaelite 
brotherhood in painting, Millais and Holman Hunt 
being his most famous associates. He also has had 
some connection with Morris in the decorative art- 
work to which the latter has been so enviably de- 
voted. The element which Rossetti's verse and bear- 
ing have brought into English poetry holds to that 
art the relation of Pre-Raphaelite painting and deco- 
ration to painting and decoration of the academic 



PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 



359 



kind. As a figure-painter, his drawings, such as I 
have seen, are far above the strictly realistic work 
produced by acolytes of his order. The term real- 
ism constantly is used to cloak the mediocrity of 
artists whose designs are stiff, barren, and grotesque, 
— the form without the soul. They deal with the 
minor facts of art, unable to compass the major; their 
labor is scarcely useful as a stepping-stone to higher 
things ; if it were not so unimaginative, it would have 
more value as a protest against conventionalism and 
a guide to something new. But Rossetti, a man of 
genius, has lighted his canvas and his pages with a 
quality that is more ennobling. He has discerned 
the spirit of beauty, wandering within the confines of 
a region whose landscape is visible, not to ground- 
lings, but to the poet's finer sight. Even his strictly 
Pre-Raphaelite verse, odd and weird as it may at first 
appear, is full of exaltation and lyrical power. 

Such of his ballads as recall the Troubadour period 
are no more realistic than the ballads of the idyllic 
poets. They are studies of what the Pre-Chaucerian 
minstrels saw, and partly result from use of their 
materials. However rich and rare, they hold, in the 
youth of the new movement, no more advanced posi- 
tion than that of Tennyson's " Oriana " and " The 
Lady of Shalott " compared with his epic and philo- 
sophic masterpieces. This point is worth considera- 
tion. The Laureate's work of this kind was an effort, 
in default of natural themes, to borrow something 
from that old Romantic art which so long has passed 
away as again to have the effect of newness. 

Much of Rossetti's verse is of this sort, yet possess- 
ing a quality which shows that his genius, if fully ex- 
ercised, might lead him to far greater achievements 



Genius of 
Rossetti. 



See /age 176. 



360 



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 



Transla- 
tions from 
" The Early 
Italian 
Poets:'' 



as an English poet. Consecrated, from his Italian 
parentage, to learning, art, and song, — reared in a 
household over which the mediaeval spirit has brooded, 
— he is thoroughly at home among romantic themes 
and processes, while a feeling like that of Dante exalts 
the maturer portion of his emblematic verse. 

In fact, he made his first appearance as a writer 
with a volume of translations, — The Early Ttalian 
Poets, published in 1861. In the new edition (1874), 
entitled " Dante and his Circle, with the Italian Poets 
preceding him," more stress is laid upon the arrange- 
ment of the book. Dante, through the " Vita Nuova " 
and many lyrics associated with his friends, is made 
the luminous central figure of a group of poets who 
shine partly by their own and partly by reflected 
light. Sonnets, lyrics, and canzonets are given also 
from more than forty additional writers, chiefly of an 
earlier date, and the whole volume is edited with 
patient learning and religious care. The time and 
poetry are elucidated with a fidelity and beauty not 
to be found in any English or Continental essays in 
the same field. An exquisite spirit possesses the 
workman and the work. An Anglo-Italian, he has a 
double nature, like that of the enchanter who under- 
stood the speech of birds. Whatever original work he 
might have produced with the same labor, it hardly 
could be a greater addition to our literature than this 
admirable transcript of Italy's most suggestive period 
and song. 

Rossetti's own poems are collected in a single vol- 
ume. Twoscore ballads, songs, and studies, with 
thrice that number of sonnets, make up its contents; 
but there are not a few to maintain that here we 
have "infinite riches in a little room." A reviewer 



HIS COLLECTED POEMS. 



361 



is grateful to one who waits for songs that sing them- 
selves, and does not force us to examine long cantos 
for a satisfactory estimate of his power. Some of 
these poems were composed years ago, but the author 
does not specify them, " as nothing has been included 
which he believes to be immature." Conscientious- 
ness is a feature of this artist's work. A poet is not 
to be measured by the quantity of his outpourings ; if 
otherwise, what of Keats or Collins, and what of 
Southey and Young ? 

In this collection, then, I find no verse so realistic 
as to be unimaginative ; but I do find a quaint use 
of old phraseology, and a revival of the early rhyth- 
mical accents. The result is a not unpleasant man- 
nerism, of a kind that is visible in the poetry of 
Morris and Swinburne, and also crops out frequently 
in recent miscellaneous verse. Besides enriching, like 
Tennyson, our modern English by the revival of obso- 
lete yet effective Saxon and Norman words, Rossetti 
adds to its flexibility by novel inversions and accent- 
ual endings. With regard to the diction, it should 
be noted that such forms as " herseemed," though 
here in keeping, would be unendurable in the verse 
of an imitator. Throughout his poetry we discern a 
finesse, a regard for detail, and a knowledge of color 
and sound, that distinguish this master of the Neo- 
Romantic school. His end is gained by simplicity 
and sure precision of touch. He knows exactly what 
effect he desires, and produces it by a firm stroke of 
color, a beam of light, a single musical tone. Herein 
he surpasses his comrades, and exhibits great tact 
in preferring only the best of a dozen graces which 
either of them would introduce. In terseness he cer- 
tainly is before them all. 
16 



Style and 
language. 



Precision 
of touch. 



362 



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTL 



An earnest 
and spirit- 
ual artist. 



Id. 



We must accept a true poet for what he is, and be 
thankful. Rossetti is not the man to attract a dul- 
lard. His quaintness must seem to many as " out- 
landish " as the speech and garments of Christian and 

aithful among the worldlings of Vanity Fair ; and 
e is so indifferent to its outlandishness that some 
may deem him wanting in sense and humor. But 
he is too earnest, too absorbed in his own vision of 
things spiritual and lovely, to look at matters from the 
common point of view. To one willing to share his 
feeling, and apt to recognize the inspiration of Diirer, 
or William Blake, or John La Farge, the effect is not 
to be gainsaid. The strangeness passes away with 
a study of his poems. Yielding to their melody and 
illumination, we are bathed in the rich colors of an 
abbey-window and listen to the music of choristers 
chanting from some skyey, hidden loft. 

The melody is indisputably fine, — whether from the 
lips of the transfigured maiden, of whom he tells us 
that, when 

" She spoke through the still weather, 
Her voice was like the voice the stars 
Had when they sang together"; 

or the witch-music of Lilith, the wife of Adam: — 

"Not a drop of her blood was human, 
But she was made like a soft, sweet woman." 

It is difficult, however, to separate a single tone 
from the current harmony. Light and color are worthy 
of the music : — 

" Her eyes were deeper than the depth 
Of waters stilled at even ; 
She had three lilies in her hand, 
And the stars in her hair were seven." 



THE BLESSED DAMOZEL: 



363 



" Her hair, that lay along her back, 
Was yellow, like ripe corn." 

— "The clear-ranged unnumbered heads 
Bowed with their aureoles." 

— " She ceased. 
The light thrilled toward her, filled 
With angels in strong level flight." 

Of Rossetti's lyrics in the Gothic or Romantic form, 
" The Blessed Damozel," from which I quote, is most 
widely known, and deserves its reputation. Nothing, 
save great originality and beauty, could win us over 
to its peculiar manner. It is full of imagination : — 

" Herseemed she scarce had been a day 
One of God's choristers ; 
The wonder was not yet quite gone 
From that still look of hers " ; 

"And the souls mounting up to God 
Went by her like thin flames." 

"I'll take his hand and go with him 
To the deep wells of light, — 
We will step down as to a stream, 
And bathe there in God's sight." 

The spell of this poem, I think, lies in the feeling 
that even in heaven the maiden, as on earth, is so 
real, so living, that 

"her bosom must have made 
The bar she leaned on warm " ; 

and that her terrestrial love and yearning are more 
to her than all the joys of Paradise. The poet, 
moreover, in this brief, wild lyric, seems to have 
conceived, like Dante, an apotheosis of some buried 



" The Bless- 
ed Damo- 
zel." 



364 



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTL 



Ballads. 



Miscellane- 
ous poems. 



Transla- 
tions from 
the French. 



mistress, — regarded, it may be, with worship, but no 
less with immortal passion and desire. 

In three mediaeval ballads of another class there 
is lyrical and dramatic power. I refer to "Troy 
Town," " Eden Bower," and " Sister Helen." These, 
with "Stratton Water" and "The Staff and Scrip," 
probably are as characteristic and successful as any 
late revival of the ballad forms. 

" A Last Confession " is a tragical Italian story, in 
blank-verse, not unlike what Browning — leaving out 
Rossetti's Italian song — might write upon a similar 
theme. " Dante at Verona " is a grave and earnest 
poem, sustained with dignity throughout, yet I prefer 
Dr. Parsons's lines " On a Bust of Dante," — that 
majestic lyric, the noblest of tributes to the great 
Florentine in our own or any other tongue. At the 
opposite extreme, and in a vein that differs from 
Rossetti's other works, we have a curious and vivid 
piece of realism entitled "Jenny." The poet moral- 
izes, with equal taste and feeling, and much pictu- 
resqueness, over a beautiful but ignorant girl of the 
town, who no more than a child is aware of the 
train of thought she has inspired. A striking passage 
upon lust is specially effective and poetical. 

I have said that as an Italian translator Rossetti is 
unsurpassed, and he is nearly as fine in renderings 
from the old French, of which both Swinburne and 
himself have made enthusiastic studies. Witness a 
stanza from " The Ballad of Dead Ladies," Francois 
Villon, 1450. The translator's inherent quaintness is 
suited to his task : — 



" Tell, me now in what hidden way is 
Lady Flora the lovely Roman? 



HIS MELODY AND IMAGINATION. 



365 



Where 's Hipparchia, and where is Thais, 

Neither of them the fairer woman ? 

Where is Echo, beheld of no man, 
Only heard on river and mere, — 

She whose beauty was more than human ? . . . . 
But where are the snows of yester-year ? " 

His lyrical faculty is exquisite ■ not often swift, but 
chaste, and purely English. " The Song of the 
Bower," a most tuneful love-chant, reminding us of 
George Darley, is a good specimen of his melody, 
while " The Stream's Secret " has more music in it 
than any slow lyric that I now remember. Dramatic 
power is indicated by true lyrical genius, and we are 
not surprised to find Rossetti's poems surcharged 
with it. As a sonneteer, also, he has no living equal. 
Take the group written for pictures and read the 
sonnet of "Mary Magdalene." It is a complete dra- 
matic poem. The series belonging to "The House 
of Life," in finish, spontaneity, and richness of feel- 
ing, is such as this man alone can produce. Mrs. 
Browning's sonnets were the deathless revelation of 
her own beautiful soul ; if these are more objective, 
they are equally perfect in another way. Finally, the 
imagination to which I have alluded is rarely absent 
from Rossetti's verse. His touches now are delicate, 
and again have a broad sweep : — 

"As though mine image in the glass 
Should tarry when myself am gone." 

"How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope, 
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, 
The wind of Death's imperishable wing?" 

In measuring his career as a poet, we at once per- 
ceive that he has moved in a somewhat narrow range 
with respect to both the thought and method of his 



Melody. 



RossettV 
sonnets. 



Imagina- 
tion. 



A sheets of 
his poetry 
and career. 



\66 



WILLIAM MORRIS. 



D. G. R. 
died at 
Birching- 
to?i-on-Sea, 
April 9, 
1882. 



William 
Morris : 
bom near 
London, 
1834- 



A n artist of 
the beaictiful. 



compositions ; but that he approaches Tennyson in 
simplicity, purity, and richness of tone. His dramatic 
and lyrical powers are very marked, though not fully 
developed ; if he had been restricted to verse as a 
means of expression, he no doubt would have added 
greatly to our English song. Sonnets like the " Bri- 
dal Birth " and " Nuptial Sleep," and poems so pro- 
foundly thoughtful as " The Sea-Limits " and " The 
Woodspurge," place him among his foremost contem- 
poraries. He has had a magnetic influence upon 
those who come within his aureole. Should he com- 
plete " The House of Life " upon its original pro- 
jection, he will leave a monument of beauty more 
lasting than the tradition of his presence. His verse 
is compact of tenderness, emotional ecstasy, and po- 
etic fire. The spirit of the master whose name he 
bears clothes him as with a white garment. And we 
should expect his associates to be humble lovers of 
the beautiful, first of all, and through its ministry to 
rise to the lustrous upper heaven of spiritual art. 



IV. 

It is but natural, then, that we should find in 
William Morris a poet who may be described, to use 
the phrase of Hawthorne, as an Artist of the Beautiful. 
He delights in the manifestation of objective beauty. 
Byron felt himself one with Nature. Morris is ab- 
sorbed in the loveliness of his romantic work, and 
as an artist seems to find enchantment and content. 

In this serenity of mood he possesses that which 
has been denied to greater poets. True, he sings of 
himself, 



AN ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 



367 



'' Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, 
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight ? " 

but what time could be to him more fortunate ? 
Amid the problems of our day, and the uncertainty 
as to what kind of art is to result from its confused 
elements, there is at least repose in the enjoyment of 
absolute beauty. There is safety in an art without a 
purpose other than to refresh and charm. People 
who labor in " six counties overhung with smoke " 
are willing enough to forget them. Morris's proffer 
of the means to this end could not have been more 
timely. Keats had juster cause for dissatisfaction : 
he could not know how eagerly men would turn to 
his work when the grandiloquent period, in which he 
found himself so valueless, should have worn itself 
away. Besides, he never fairly attained his ideal. 
To him the pursuit of Beauty, rather than the pos- 
session, was a passion and an appetite. He followed 
after, and depicted her, but was not at rest in her 
presence. Had Keats lived, — had he lived to gain 
the feeling of Morris, to pass from aspiration to at- 
tainment, and had his delicious poems been succeeded 
by others, comparing with "Isabella" and "The Eve 
of St. Agnes," as " The Earthly Paradise " compares 
with " The Defence of Guenevere," then indeed the 
world would have listened to a singer 

" Such as it had 
In the ages glad, 
Long ago ! " 

Morris appears to have been devoted from youth 
to the service of the beautiful. He has followed 
more than one branch of art, and enjoys, besides his 
fame as a poet, a practical reputation as an original 



Morris and 
Keats. 



3<58 



WILLIAM MORRIS. 



Taste, the 
parent of 
versatility 
in art. 



" The De- 
fence of 
Guenevere, 
1858. 



and graceful designer in decorative work of many 
kinds. The present era, like the Venetian, and others 
in which taste has sprung from the luxury of wealth, 
seems to breed a class of handicraftsmen who are 
adepts in various departments of creative art. Ros- 
setti, Morris, Linton, Scott, Woolner, Hamerton, among 
others, follow the arts of song or of design at will. 
Doubtless the poet Morris, while making his unique 
drawings for stained glass, wall-paper, or decorative 
tile-work, finds a pleasure as keen as that of the 
artist Morris in the construction of his metrical ro- 
mances. There is balm and recreation to any writer 
in some tasteful pursuit which may serve as a foil to 
that which is the main labor and highest purpose of 
his life. 

As for his poetry, it is of a sort which must be 
delightful to construct : wholly removed from self, 
breeding neither anguish nor disquiet, but full of soft 
music and a familiar olden charm. So easeful to read, 
it cannot be unrestful to compose, and to the maker 
must be its own reward. He keeps within his self- 
allotted region ; if it be that of a lotos-eater's dream, 
he is willing to be deluded, and no longing for the 
real makes him "half sick of shadows." In this re- 
spect he is a wise, sweet, and very fortunate bard. 

Some years ago, judging of Morris by The Defence 
of Guenevere, and Other Poems, the only volume which 
he then had printed, I wrote of him : " Never a slov- 
enly writer, he gives us pieces that repay close reading, 
but also compel it, for they smack of the closet and 
studio rather than of the world of men and women, 
or that of the woods and fields. He, too, sings the 
deeds of Arthur and Lancelot." Let me now say that 
there is no purer or fresher landscape, more clearly 



THE DEFENCE OF GUENEVERE: 



369 



visible both to the author and the reader, than is to 
be found everywhere in the course of Morris's later 
volumes. Not only are his descriptions of every as- 
pect of Nature perfect, but he enters fully into the 
effect produced by her changes upon our lives and 
feelings. He sings of June, 

" And that desire that rippling water gives 
To youthful hearts to wander anywhere " ; 

of the drowsy August languor, 

" When men were happy, they could scarce tell why, 
Although they felt the rich year slipping by." 

A thousand similar examples may be selected from 
his poems. But his first work was quite in sympathy 
with that of Rossetti : an effort to disconnect poetry 
from modern thought and purpose, through a return 
not so much to nature as to models taken from the 
age of ballad-romance. It was saturated with the 
Pre-Chaucerian spirit. In mediaeval tone, color, and 
somewhat rigid drawing, it corresponded to the missal- 
work style of the Pre-Raphaelites in art. The manner 
was too studied to permit of swift movement or broad 
scope ; the language somewhat ancient and obscure. 
There is much that is fine, however, in the plumed 
and heroic ballad, "Riding Together," and "The 
Haystack in the Flood" is a powerful conception, 
wrought out with historic truth of detail and grim 
dramatic effect. 

These thirty poems, fitly inscribed to Rossetti, made 
up a work whose value somewhat depended upon its 
promise for the future. The true Pre-Raphaelite is 
willing to bury his own name in order to serve his 
art ; to spend a life, if need be, in laying the ground- 
16* x 



Pre-Chau- 
cerian bal- 
lads. 



37o 



WILLIAM MORRIS. 



"The Life 
and Death 
of Jason" 
1865. 



C>. " Poets 

of A mer- 
ica^: p. 



wall upon which his successors can build a new tem- 
ple that shall replace the time-worn structure he has 
helped to tear away. But, to a man of genius, the 
higher service often is given later in his own career. 
Morris's second volume showed that he had left 
the shadows of ballad minstrelsy, and entered the 
pleasant sunlight of Chaucer. After seven years of 
silence The Life and Death of Jason was a surprise, 
and was welcomed as the sustained performance of 
a true poet. It is a narrative poem, of epic propor- 
tions, all story and action, composed in the rhymed 
pentameter, strongly and sweetly carried from the 
first book to the last of seventeen. In this produc- 
tion, as in all the works of Morris, — in some respects 
the most notable raconteur since the time of his 
avowed master, Geoffrey Chaucer, — the statement is 
newly illustrated, that imaginative poets do not invent 
their own legends, but are wise in taking them from 
those historic treasuries of fact and fiction, the out- 
lines of which await only a master-hand to invest them 
with living beauty. The invention of "Jason," for 
instance, does not consist in the story of the Golden 
Fleece, but in new effects of combination, and in the 
melody and vigor of the means by which these old 
adventurous Greeks again are made to voyage, sing, 
love, fight, and die before us. Its author has a close 
knowledge of antiquities. Here and there his method 
is borrowed from Homer, — as in the gathering of the 
chiefs, which occupies the third book. Octosyllabic 
songs are interspersed, such as that of Orpheus, 



" O bitter sea, tumultuous sea, 
Full many an ill is wrought by thee ! " 



after which, 



'THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JASON: 



371 



"Then shouted all the heroes, and they drove 
The good ship forth, so that the birds above, 
With long white wings, scarce flew so fast as they." 

These three lines convey an idea of the general dic- 
tion ; nor can any be selected from the ten thousand 
which compose the work that do not show how well 
our Saxon English is adapted for the transmission of 
the Homeric spirit. The poem is fresh and stirring, 
and the style befits the theme, though not free from 
harshness and careless rhymes ; moreover, it must be 
confessed that the reader often grows weary of the 
prolonged tale. This is an Odyssean epic, but written 
with continuity of eflort ; not growing of itself with 
the growth of a nation, nor builded at long intervals 
like the " Idyls of the King." The poet lacks variety. 
His voice is in a single key, and, although it be 
a natural one that does not tire the ear, we are con- 
tent as we close the volume, and heave a sigh of 
satisfied appetite rather than of regret that the enter- 
tainment has reached an end. 

In his learned taste for whatever is curious and 
rare Morris has made researches among the Sagas 
of Norse literature, especially those of Iceland. The 
admirable translations which he made, in company 
with E. Magnusson, from the Icelandic Grettis and 
Volsunga Sagas, show how thoroughly every class of 
work is fashioned by his hands, and illustrate the 
wealth of the resources from which he obtained the 
conception of his latest poem. 1 The Story of Grettir 
the Strong, and The Story of the Volsungs and Mblungs, 



He now is said to be engaged upon a lineal and literal 
translation of Virgil, — a work which he can hardly fail to exe- 
cute speedily and well. 



Transla- 
tions from, 
the Iceland' 
ic, 1869. 



372 



WILLIAM MORRIS. 



"The 

Earthly 

Paradise,' 1 

1868-70. 



Historic 
■myths and 
legends. 



Cp " Poets 

of Amer- 
ica " : //. 
108, 109. 



appeared in .1869; but in 1868, five years after the 
completion of "Jason," the public had been delighted 
with the early instalments of a charming production, 
which, whatever he may accomplish hereafter, fairly 
exhibits his powers in their most sustained and varied 
form. 

The plan of The Earthly Paradise was conceived 
in a day that should be marked with a white stone, 
since for this poet to undertake it was to complete 
it. The effort was so sure to adjust itself to his genius 
(which is epic rather than dramatic), that the only 
question was one of time, and that is now a question 
of the past. In this important work Morris reaches 
the height of his success as a relator. His poems 
always have been stories. Even the shortest ballads 
in his first book are upon themes from the old chron- 
icles. " The Earthly Paradise " has the universe of 
fiction for a field, and reclothes the choicest and most 
famous legends of Asia and Europe with the delicate 
fabric of its verse. Greek and Oriental lore, the tales 
of the Gesta Romanorum, the romance of the Nibe- 
lungen-Lied, and even the myths of the Eddas, con- 
tribute to this thesaurus of narrative song. All these 
tales are familiar: many of a type from which John 
Fiske or Miiller would prove their long descent, tra- 
cing them far as the " most eastern East " ; but never 
before did they appear in more attractive shape, or 
fall so musically from a poet's honeyed mouth. Their 
fascination is beyond question. We listen to the 
narrator, as Arabs before the desert fire hang upon 
the lips of one who recites some legend of the good 
Haroun. Here is a successor to Boccaccio and to 
Chaucer. The verse, indeed, is exclusively Chauce- 
rian, of which three styles are used, the heroic, sestina, 



THE EARTHLY PARADISE: 



373 



and octosyllabic. Chance quotations show with what 
felicity and perfect ease the modern poet renews the 
cadences of his master. Take one from " Atalanta's 
Race": — 

"Through thick Arcadian woods a hunter went, 
Following the beasts up, on a fresh spring day; 
But since his horn-tipped bow, but seldom bent, 
Now at the noontide naught had happed to slay, 
Within a vale he called his hounds away, 
Hearkening the echoes of his lone voice cling 
About the cliffs, and through the beech-trees ring." 

Another from " The Man Born to be King " : — 

"So long he rode he drew anigh 
A mill upon the river's brim, 
That seemed a goodly place to him, 
For o'er the oily, smooth millhead 
There hung the apples growing red, 
And many an ancient apple-tree 
Within the orchard could he see, 
While the smooth millwalls, white and black, 
Shook to the great wheel's measured clack, 
And grumble of the gear within ; 
While o'er the roof that dulled that din 
The doves sat crooning half the day, 
And round the half-cut stack of hay 
The sparrows fluttered twittering." 

And this, from "The Story of Cupid and Psyche" :- 

"From place to place Love followed her that day 
And ever fairer to his eyes she grew, 
So that at last when from her bower she flew, 
And underneath his feet the moonlit sea 
Went shepherding his waves disorderly, 
He swore that of all gods and men, no one 
Should hold her in his arms but he alone." 

The couplet which I have italicized has an imagi 



Three modes 
of Chauce- 
rian verse. 



374 



WILLIAM MORRIS. 



Clear ex- 
pression. 



native quality not frequent in Morris's verse, for the 
excellence of this poet lies rather in his clear vision 
and exquisite directness of speech. Examples, other- 
wise neither better nor worse than the foregoing, may 
be taken from any one of the sixteen hundred pages 
of his great work. I can give but the briefest state- 
ment of its method and range. 

In each of these metrical forms the verse is smooth 
and transparent, — the choice result of the author's 
Chaucerian studies, with what addition of beauty and 
suggestiveness his genius can bestow. His language 
is so pure that there absolutely is no resisting medi- 
um to obscure the interest of a tale. We feel that 
he enjoys his story as we do, yet the technical excel- 
lence, seen at once by a writer, scarcely is thought 
of by the lay reader, to whom poetry is in the main 
addressed. Morris easily grasps the feeling of each 
successive literature from which his stories are de- 
rived. He is at will a pagan, a Christian, or a wor- 
shipper of Odin and Thor; and especially has caught 
the spirit of those generations which, scarcely emerged 
from classicism in the South, and bordered by hea- 
thendom on the North, peopled their unhallowed 
places with beings drawn from either source. Christ 
reigned, yet the old gods had not wholly faded out, 
but acted, whether fair or devilish, as subjects and 
allies of Satan. All this is magically conveyed in 
such poems as " The Ring given to Venus " and 
" The Lady of the Land." The former may be con- 
sulted (and any other will do almost as well) for evi- 
dence of the advantage possessed by Morris through 
his knowledge of mediaeval costumes, armor, dances, 
festivals, and all the curious paraphernalia of days 
gone by. So well equipped a virtuoso, and so facile 



THE EARTHLY PARADISE? 



375 



a rhythmist, was warranted in undertaking to write 
"The Earthly Paradise," broad as it is in scope, and 
extended to the enormous length of forty thousand 
lines. The result shows that he set himself a per- 
fectly feasible task. 

In this work he avoids the prolonged strain of 
"Jason," by making, with few exceptions, each story 
of a length that can be read at a sitting. His har- 
monic turn is shown in the arrangement of them all 
under the signs of the zodiac. We have one clas- 
sical and one mediaeval legend for each month of 
the year. I take it that the framework of the whole, 
the romance of voyagers in search of an earthly 
Paradise, is familiar to the reader. While Morris 
claims Chaucer, as Dante claimed Virgil, for his 
master, this only relates to the purpose and form of 
his poetry, for the freshness and sweetness are his 
own. He has gone to Chaucer, but also to nature, 
— to the earth whence sprang that well of English 
undefiled. His descriptive preludes, that serenely 
paint each phase of the revolving year, and the 
scenic touches throughout his stories, are truthful and 
picturesque. He uses but few and often-repeated ad- 
jectives ; like the early rhapsodists, once having chosen 
an epithet for a certain thing, he clings to it, never 
introducing, for novelty's sake, another that is poorer 
than the best. 

Morris fairly escapes from our turmoil and mate- 
rialism by this flight to the refuge of amusement and 
simple art. A correlative moral runs through all of 
his poetry ; one which, it must be owned, savors of 
pagan fatalism. The thought conveyed is that noth- 
ing should concern men but to enjoy what hollow 
good the gods award us, and this in the present, be- 



A tinge of 
fatalism. 



376 



WILLIAM MORRIS. 



" Carpe 
diem.'''' 



fore the days come when we shall say we have no 
pleasure in them, — before death come, which closes 
all. He not only chooses to be a dreamer of dreams, 
and will not " strive to set the crooked straight/' but 
tells us, — 

" Yes> ye are made immortal on the day 
Ye cease the dusty grains of time to weigh " ; 

and in every poem has some passage like this : — 

" Fear little, then, I counsel you, 
What any son of man can do ; 
Because a log of wood will last 
While many a life of man goes past, 
And all is over in slight space." 

His hoary voyagers have toiled and wandered, as they 

find, in vain : — 

"Lo, 
A long life gone, and nothing more they know, 
Why they should live to have desire and foil, 
And toil, that, overcome, brings yet more toil, 
Than that day of their vanished youth, when first 
They saw Death clear, and deemed all life accurst 
By that cold, overshadowing threat, — the End." 

They have nothing left but to beguile the remnant of 
their hours with story and repose, until the grave shall 
be reached, in which there is neither device, nor knowl- 
edge, nor wisdom. The poet's constant injunction is 
to seize the day, to strive not for greater or new 
things, since all will soon be over, and who knoweth 
what is beyond ? In his epilogue to the entire work 
he faithfully epitomizes its spirit : — 

" Death have we hated, knowing not what it meant ; 
Life have we loved, through green leaf and through sere, 
Though still the less we knew of its intent : 
The Earth and Heaven through countless year on year, 



THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 



377 



Hung round about a little room, where play 
Weeping and laughter of man's empty day." 

This tinge of fatalism has a saddening effect upon 
Morris's verse, and thus far lessens its charm. A 
shadow falls across the feast. One of his critics has 
well said that " A poet, in this age of the world, who 
would be immortal, must write as if he himself be- 
lieved in immortality." His personages, moreover, are 
phantasmal, and really seem as if they issued from the 
ivory gate. Again, while his latest work is a marvel 
of prolonged strength and industry, its length gives 
it somewhat of an encyclopedic character. The last 
volume was not received so eagerly as the first. I 
would not quote against the author that saying of 
Callimachus, " a great book is a great evil " ; never- 
theless we feel that he has a too facile power, — a 
story once given him, — of putting it into rippling 
verse as rapidly as another man can write it in prose. 
Still, " The Earthly Paradise " is a library of itself, 
and in yielding to its spell we experience anew the 
delights which the " Arabian Nights " afforded to our 
childhood. What more tempting than to loll in such 
an " orchard-close " as the poet is wont to paint for 
us, and — with clover blooming everywhere, and the 
robins singing about their nests — to think it a por- 
tion of that fairy-land " East of the Sun and West of 
the Moon " ; or to read the fay-legends of " The Watch- 
ing of the Falcon " and " Ogier the Dane," or that 
history of " The Lovers of Gudrun," which possibly 
is the finest, as it is the most extended, of all our 
author's romantic poems? What more potent spell 
to banish care and pain ? And let there be some 
one near to sing : — 



Metrical 
facility. 



378 



WILLIAM MORRIS. 



Sweet, but 
unimpas- 
sioned, 
measures. 



Relative 
■positions of 
the Neo- 
Romantic 



" In the white-flowered hawthorn brake, 
Love, be merry for my sake ; 
Twine the blossoms in my hair, 
Kiss me where I am most fair, — 
Kiss me, love ! for who knoweth 
What thing cometh after death ? " 

We have seen that the poetry of William Morris is 
thoroughly sweet and wholesome, fair with the beauty 
of green fields and summer skies, and pervaded by a 
restful charm. Yet it is but the choicest fashion of 
romantic narrative-verse. The poet's imagination is 
clear, but never lofty ; he never will rouse the soul 
to elevated thoughts and deeds. His low, continuous 
music reminds us of those Moorish melodies whose 
delicacy and pathos come from the gentle hearts of 
an expiring race, and seem the murmurous echo of 
strains that had an epic glory in the far-away past. 
Readers who look for passion, faith, and high im- 
aginings, will find his measures cloying in the end. 
Rossetti's work has been confined to Pre-Chaucerian 
minstrelsy, and to the spiritualism of the early Italian 
school. Morris advances to a revival of the narra- 
tive art of Chaucer. The next effort, to complete the 
cyclic movement, should renew the fire and lyric out- 
burst of the dramatic poets. Let us estimate the 
promise of what already has been essayed in that 
direction; — but to do this we must listen to the 
voice of the youngest and most impassioned of the 
group that stand with feet planted upon the outer 
circuit of the Victorian choir, and with faces looking 
eagerly toward the future. 



CHAPTER XI. 



LATTER-DAY SINGERS. 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 



SOME years have passed since this poet took the 
critical outposts by storm, and with a single 
effort gained a laurel-crown, of which no public envy, 
nor any lesser action of his own, thenceforth could 
dispossess him. The time has been so crowded with 
his successive productions — his career, with all its 
strength and imprudence, has been so thoroughly that 
of a poet — as to heighten the interest which only a 
spirit of most unusual quality can excite and long 
maintain. 

We have just observed the somewhat limited range 
of William Morris's vocabulary. It is composed mainly 
of plain Saxon words, chosen with great taste and 
musically put together. No barrenness, however, is 
perceptible, since to enrich that writer's language 
from learned or modern sources would disturb the 
tone of his pure English feeling. The nature of 
Swinburne's diction is precisely opposite. His faculty 
of expression is so brilliant as to obscure the other 
elements which are to be found in his verse, and 
constantly to lead him beyond the wisdom of art. 
Nevertheless, reflecting upon his genius and the 
chances of his future, it is difficult for any one to 
write with cold restraint who has an eye to see, an 



A Igernon 
Charles 
Swinburne : 
born in Lon- 
don, April 

s. 1837- 



His diction. 



38o 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 



His surpris- 
ing com- 
mand of 
rhythm. 



ear to hear, and the practice which forces an artist 
to wonder at the lustre, the melody, the unstinted 
fire and movement, of his imperious song. 



I. 

I wish, then, to speak at some length upon the one 
faculty in which Swinburne excels any living English 
poet ; in which I doubt if his equal has existed 
among recent poets of any tongue, unless Shelley be 
excepted, or, possibly, some lyrist of the modern 
French school. This is his miraculous gift of rhythm, 
his command over the unsuspected resources of a 
language. That Shelley had a like power is, I think, 
shown in passages like the choruses of " Prometheus 
Unbound," but he flourished half a century ago, and 
did not have (as Swinburne has) Shelley for a prede- 
cessor ! A new generation, refining upon the les- 
sons given by himself and Keats, has carried the 
art of rhythm to extreme variety and finish. Were 
Shelley to have a second career, his work, if no finer 
in single passages, would have, all in all, a range of 
musical variations such as we discover in Swinburne's. 
So close is the resemblance in quality of these two 
voices, however great the difference in development, 
as almost to justify a belief in metempsychosis. A 
master is needed to awake the spirit slumbering in 
any musical instrument. Before the advent of Swin- 
burne we did not realize the full scope of English 
verse. In his hands it is like the violin of Paganini. 
The range of his fantasias, roulades, arias, new effects 
of measure and sound, is incomparable with anything 
hitherto known. The first emotion of one who studies 
even his immature work is that of wonder at the 



HIS COMMAND OF RHYTHM. 



381 



freedom and richness of his diction, the susurrus of 
his rhythm, his unconscious alliterations, the endless 
change of his syllabic harmonies, — resulting in the 
alternate softness and strength, height and fall, riot- 
ous or chastened music, of his affluent verse. How 
does he produce it? Who taught him all the hidden 
springs of melody ? He was born a tamer of words : 
a subduer of this most stubborn, yet most copious of 
the literary tongues. In his poetry we discover qual- 
ities we did not know were in the language, — a soft- 
ness that seemed Italian, a rugged strength we thought 
was German, a blithe and debonair lightness we de- 
spaired of capturing from the French. He has added 
a score of new stops and pedals to the instrument 
He has introduced, partly from other tongues, stanzaic 
forms, measures and effects untried before ; and has 
brought out the swiftness and force of metres like 
the anapestic, carrying each to perfection at a single 
trial. Words in his hands are like the ivory balls of 
a juggler, and all words seem to be in his hands. 
His fellow- craftsmen, who alone can understand what 
has been done in their art, will not term this state- 
ment extravagance. Speaking only of his command 
over language and metre, I have a right to reaffirm, 
and to show by many illustrations, that he is the 
most sovereign of rhythmists. He compels the in- 
flexible elements to his use. Chaucer is more limpid, 
Shakespeare more kingly, Milton loftier at times, 
Byron has an unaffected power, — but neither Shelley 
nor the greatest of his predecessors is so dithyrambic, 
and no one has been in all moods so absolute an 
autocrat of verse. With equal gifts, I say, none 
could have been, for Swinburne comes after and prof- 
its by the art of all. Poets often win distinction by 



Unprece- 
dented mel- 
ody and 
freedom. 



The most 
dithyrambic 
of poets. 



382 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 



Expression 
carried to 
fatigtiing 
excess. 



producing work that differs from what has gone be- 
fore. It seems as if Swinburne, in this ripe period, 
resolved to excel others by a mastery of known 
melodies, adding a new magic to each, and going 
beyond the range of the farthest. His amazing tricks 
of rhythm are those of a gymnast outleaping his 
fellows. We had Keats, Shelley, and Coleridge, after 
Collins and Gray, and Tennyson after Keats, but now 
Swinburne adds such elaboration, that an art which 
we thought perfected seems almost tame. In the 
first place, he was born a prodigy, — as much so as 
Morphy in chess ; added to this he is the product of 
these latter days, a phenomenon impossible before. 
It is safe to declare that at last a time has come 
when the force of expression can no further go. 

I do not say that it has not gone too far. The 
fruit may be, and here is, too luscious ; the flower is 
often of an odor too intoxicating to endure. Yet 
what execution ! Poetry, the rarest poetic feeling, 
may be found in simpler verse. Yet again, what exe- 
cution ! The voice may not be equal to the grandest 
music, nor trained and restrained as it should be. 
But the voice is there, and its possessor has the finest 
natural organ to which this generation has listened. 

Right here it is plain that Swinburne, especially in 
his early poems, has weakened his effects by cloying 
us with excessive richness of epithet and sound : in 
later works, by too elaborate expression and redun- 
dancy of treatment. Still, while Browning's amplifi- 
cation is wont to be harsh and obscure, Swinburne, 
even if obscure, or when the thought is one that he 
has repeated again and again, always gives us unap- 
proachable melody and grace. It is true that his glo- 
ries of speech often hang upon the slightest thread 



VOICE AND EXECUTION. 



383 



of purpose. He so constantly wants to stop and sing 
that he gets along slowly with a plot. As we listen 
to his fascinating music, the meaning, like the libretto 
of an opera, often passes out of mind. The melody 
is unbroken : in this, as in other matters, Swinburne's 
fault is that of excess. He does not frequently admit 
the sweet discords, of which he is a master, nor re- 
lieve his work by simple, contrasting interludes. Un- 
til recently his voice had a narrow range ; its effect 
resulted from changes upon a few notes. The rich- 
ness of these permutations was a marvel, yet a series 
of them blended into mannerism. Shelley could be 
academic at times, and even humorous ; but Swin- 
burne's monotone, original and varied within its 
bounds, was thought to be the expression of a limited 
range of feeling, and restricted his early efforts as a 
dramatic lyrist. 

The question first asked, with regard to either a 
poet or singer, is, Has he voice ? and then, Has he 
execution ? We have lastly to measure the passion, 
imagination, invention, to which voice and method 
are but ministers. From the quality of the latter, the 
style being the man, we often may estimate the higher 
faculties that control them. The principle here in- 
volved runs through all the arts of beauty and use 
A fine vocal gift is priceless, both for itself and for 
the spiritual force behind it. With this preliminary 
stress upon Swinburne's most conspicuous gift, let us 
briefly examine his record, bethinking ourselves how 
difficult it is to judge a poet who is obscured by his 
own excess of light, and whose earlier verses so cloyed 
the mind with richness as to deprive it of the judicial 
taste. 



Voice and 
execution 
always 
essential. 



384 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWLNBURNE. 



Swinburne 
and Landor. 



Early dra- 
mas : pub- 
lished in 



An Eliza- 
bethan man- 
ner. 



II. 

There is a resemblance, both of temperament and 
intellect, between Swinburne and what is known of 
Landor in his youth. The latter remained for a com- 
paratively brief time at college, but the younger poet, 
like the elder, was a natural scholar and linguist. 
He profited largely by his four years at Oxford, and 
the five at Eton which preceded them, for his intuitive 
command of languages is so unusual, that a year of 
his study must be worth a lustrum of other men's, 
and he has developed this gift by frequent and ex- 
quisite usage. No other Englishman has been so 
able to vary his effects by modes drawn, not only 
from classical and Oriental literatures, but from the 
haunting beauty of mediaeval song. I should suppose 
him to be as familiar with French verse, from Ron- 
sard to Hugo, as most of us are with the poetry of 
our own language, — and he writes either in Greek 
or Latin, old and new, or in troubadour French, as 
if his thoughts came to him in the diction for the 
time assumed. No really admirable work, I think, 
can be produced in a foreign tongue, until this kind 
of lingui-naturalization has been attained. 

His first volume, The Queen Mother and Rosamond, 
gave him no reputation. Possibly it was unnoticed 
amid the mass of new verse offered the public. We 
now see that it was of much significance. It showed 
the new author to be completely unaffected by the 
current idyllic mode. Not a trace of Tennyson ; just 
a trace, on the other hand, of Browning ; above all, a 
true dramatic manner of the poet's own, — like noth- 
ing modern, but recalling the cadences, fire, and ac- 
tion of England's great dramatic period. There were 



THE QUEEN MOTHER' AND 'ROSAMOND: 



385 



many faults of construction, but also very strong and 
beautiful characterizations, in this youth's first essays : 
a manifest living in his personages for the time ; such 
fine language as this, in " Rosamond " : — ■ 

" I see not flesh is holier than flesh, 
Or blood than blood more choicely qualified 
That scorn should live between them." 

And this : — 

" I that have roses in my name, and make 
All flowers glad to set their color by ; 
I that have held a land between twin lips 
And turned large England to a little kiss ; 
God thinks not of me as contemptible." 

" The Queen Mother " (time : the massacre of St. 
Bartholomew) is a longer and more complex tragedy 
than that from which the foregoing lines are taken. 
Catherine de' Medici is strongly and clearly delineated, 
i — a cruel, relentless, yet imposing figure. The style 
is caught from Shakespeare, as if the youth's pride 
of intellect would let him go no lower for a model. 
Study, for example, the language of Teligny, Act III., 
Scene 2 ; and that of Catherine, Act V., Scene 3, 
where she avows that if God's ministers could see 
what she was about to do, then 

" Surely the wind would be as a hard fire, 
And the sea's yellow and distempered foam 
Displease the happy heaven ; . . . . 

. . . . towers and popular streets 

Should in the middle green smother and drown, 

And Havoc die with fulness." 

In another scene the king says of Denise : — 
17 ' Y 



"Rosa- 
mond.'' 



" The Queen 
Mother." 



386 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 



" A talanta 
in Calydon," 
1864. 



" Yea, dead ? 
She is all white to the dead hair, who was 
So full of gracious rose the' air took color, 
Turned to a kiss against her face." 

The scene in which Catherine poisons her clown, 
and the whole of the closing portion of Act V., are 
full of strength and spirit. Scattered through the two 
plays are some of the curious Latin, old French, and 
old English lyrics which the author already was so 
deft at turning. The volume was inscribed to Rossetti. 
It reveals to a penetrative eye many traits of the gen- 
ius that has since blazed out so finely, and shows the 
nature of Swinburne's studies and associates. The 
man had come who was to do what Browning had 
failed to do in a less propitious time, and make a 
successful diversion from the idyllic lead of Tennyson. 
The body of recent minor verse fully displays the 
swift and radical character of the change. 

Three years later Swinburne printed his classical 
tragedy, Atalanta in Calydon. 1 Whatever may be said 
of the genuineness of any reproduction of the antique, 
this is the best of its kind. One who undertakes such 
work has the knowledge that his theme is removed 
from popular sympathy, and must be content with, a 
restricted audience. Swinburne took up the classical 
dramatic form, and really made the dry bones live, — 
as even Landor and Arnold had not; as no man had, 
before or after Shelley ; that is to say, as no man 
has, for the " Prometheus Unbound," grand as it is, 
is classical only in some of its personages and in the 



1 During this time he also had written " Chastelard," but held 
it in reserve for future publication. "Atalanta" was begun on 
the day following the completion of the last-named poem. 



ATALANTA IN CALYDON: 



387 



mythical germ of its conception, — a sublime poem, 
full of absorbing beauty, but antique neither in spirit 
nor in form. "Atalanta" is upon the severest Greek 
model, that of yEschylus or Sophocles, and reads like 
an inspired translation. We cannot repeat the antique 
as it existed, though a poem may be better or worse. 
But consider the nearness of this success, and the 
very great poetry involved. 

Poetry and all, this thing has for once been done 
as well as possible, and no future poet can safely at- 
tempt to rival it. " Atalanta " is Greek in unity 
and simplicity, not only in the technical unities, — 
utterly disregarded in "Prometheus Unbound," — but 
in maintenance of a single pervading thought, the im- 
possibility of resisting the inexorable high gods. The 
hopeless fatalism of this tragedy was not the senti- 
ment of the joyous and reverential Greeks, but reminds 
us of the Hebrews, whose God was of a stern and 
dreadful type. This feeling, expressed in much of 
Swinburne's early verse, is the outcome of a haughty 
and untamed intellect chafing against a law which it 
cannot resist. Here is an imperious mind, requiring 
years of discipline and achievement to bring it into 
that harmony with its conditions through which we 
arrive at strength, happiness, repose. 

The opening invocation of the Chief Huntsman, 
with its majestic verse and imagery, alone secures the 
reader's attention, and the succeeding chorus, at the 
height of Swinburne's lyric reach, resolves attention 
to enchantment : — 

"When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, 
The mother of months in meadow or plain 
Fills the shadows and windy places 
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; 



The best 
English re- 
production 
of the an- 
tique. 



383 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 



The cho- 
ruses. 



And the brown bright nightingale amorous 
Is half-assuaged for Itylus, 
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, 
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain." 

Read this divine chorus, and three others equally 
perfect of their kind, deepening in grandeur and im- 
pressiveness : " Before the beginning of years," " We 
have seen thee, O Love, thou art fair," "Who hath 
given man speech?" — and we have read the noblest 
verse of a purely lyric order that has appeared since 
the songs and choruses of the " Prometheus." How 
much more dithyrambic than the unrhymed measures 
of Arnold ! Rhyme is free as the air, that chartered 
libertine, to this poet, and our language in his mouth 
becomes not only as strong, but as musical, as the 
Greek. The choric spirit is here, however inharmo- 
nious the thought that God is the "supreme evil," 
covering us with his "hate," or the conclusion of the 
whole matter : — 

" Who shall contend with his lords, 

Or cross them or do them wrong? 
Who shall bind them as with cords ? 

Who shall tame them as with song ? 
Who shall smite them as with swords ? 

For the hands of their kingdom are strong." 

Finally, the conception of the drama is large, the 
imagination clear, elevated, of an even tone through- 
out. The herald's account of the hunt is finely poetic. 
The choric responses of the last dialogue form a reso- 
nant climax to the whole. As a work of art it still 
remains the poet's flawless effort, showing the most 
objective purpose and clarified by the necessity of 
restraint. It is good to know that a work of pure 
art could at once make its way. It appealed to a 



'POEMS AND BALLADS: 



389 



select audience, but the verdict of the few was so 
loud and instant as to gain for " Atalanta " a popular 
reading, — especially in rude America, with her strange, 
pathetic, misunderstood yearning for a rightful share 
of the culture and beauty of the older world. 

" Chastelard " appeared in the ensuing year ; but 
as I wish to mention this poem in some discussion of 
the larger work to which it holds the relation of the 
first division of a trilogy, and of Swinburne's char- 
acter as a dramatist, let us pass to the miscellaneous 
productions of the ten years intervening between "Ata- 
lanta " and "Bothwell." 



III. 

Swinburne's work revived the interest felt in poetry. 
His power was so evident that the public looked to 
see what else had come from his pen. This led to 
the collection, under the title of Poems and Ballads, 
of various lyrical pieces, some of which had been 
contributed to the serials, while others now were 
printed for the first time. Without fair consideration, 
this volume was taken as a new and studied work of 
the mature poet, and there was much astonishment 
over its contents. Here began a notable literary dis- 
cussion. If unmeasured praise had been awarded to 
Swinburne for the chastity and beauty of " Atalanta," 
he now was made to feel how the critical breath could 
shift to the opposite extreme and balance its early 
favor with reprehension of the severest kind. Here 
was a series of wild and Gothic pieces, full of sensu- 
ous and turbid passion, lavishing a prodigious wealth 
&f music and imagery upon the most perilous themes, 
and treating them in an openly defiant manner. 



" Poems and 

Ballads," 

1866. 



Excitement 
created by 
this book. 



390 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 



"Notes on 
Poems and 
Reviews," 



A literary 
antagonism. 



Sense was everywhere exalted above spirituality ; and 
to them who did not consider the formative nature of 
the book and the dramatic purpose of the least re- 
strained ballads, it seemed as if the young author was 
lusting after strange gods, and had plunged into 
adoration of Venus and Priapus ; or that he had 
drunk of Circe's goblet, and was crowning himself 
with garlands ere his transformation into one of the 
beasts that follow in her train. Rebukes were freely 
uttered, — indeed, a storm of denunciation began. 
Friends and partisans rushed to his defence ; and at 
last the poet spoke for himself, with no doubtful force 
of satire and scorn, in reply both to the reviewers 
and to an able but covert attack made against him 
by a rival singer. So fierce a literary antagonism has 
not been known since the contests of Byron and the 
Lake school. Of course it gave the book a wide 
reading, followed by a marked influence upon the 
style of fledgling poets. The lyrics were reprinted in 
America, with the new title of " Laus Veneris," — 
taken from the opening poem, another presentment 
of the Tannhauser legend that has bewitched so 
many of the recent French and English minstrels. 
The author's reputation, hitherto confined to the ad- 
mirers of " Atalanta," now extended to the masses 
who read from curiosity. Some were content to rep- 
rehend, or smack their lips over the questionable 
portions of the new book ; but many, while perceiv- 
ing the crudeness of the ruder strains, rejoiced in 
the lyrical splendor that broke out here and there, 
and welcomed the poet's unique additions to the 
metric and stanzaic forms of English verse. 

That Swinburne fairly provoked censure he must 
himself have been aware, if he cared enough about 



THE POET AND HIS CRITICS. 



391 



the matter to reflect at all. I have no doubt he was 
astonished at its vehemence, and in truth the outcry 
of the moralists may have been overloud. People did 
not see, what now is clear enough, that these poems 
and ballads represented the primal stages of the 
poet's growth. Good or bad, they were brought to- 
gether and frankly given to the public. Doubtless, 
were the author now to make up a library edition of 
his works, there are several of these pieces he would 
prefer to omit. Of what writer may there not as 
much be said, unless, like Rossetti, he has lived be- 
yond the years of Byron before publishing at all ? 
It chances, however, that certain lyrics which we 
well could spare on account of their unpleasant sug- 
gestions are among the most beautiful in language 
and form. Others, against which no ethical objec- 
tions can lie, are weakened by the author's feeblest 
affectations. All young poets, have sins to answer 
for: to Swinburne men could say, as Arthur to Guen- 
evere, " And in the flesh thou hast sinned ! " so mor- 
bid and absurd ' are some of the phrases in this 
collection. Certainly there was an offence against 
good taste and discretion, and, if some of the poems 
were open to the interpretation given them, an offence 
of a more serious nature, for all indecency is out- 
lawed of art. The young poet, under a combination 
of influences, seems to have had a marked attack of 
that green-sickness which the excited and untrained im- 
agination, mistaking its own fancies for experience, 
undergoes before gaining strength through the vigor 
of healthy passion, mature and self-contained. Still, 
there are those who can more easily forgive the worst 
of Swinburne's youthful antics than those unconscious 
sins of commonplace, plagiarism, turgidity, — the hun- 



C ensure 
fairly pro- 
voked, but 
too vehe- 
ment. 



The volume 
an out- 
growth of 
the />oet's 
formative 
period. 



392 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 



The "fer- 
ment of new 
wine.'''' 



Early 
Gothic 
studies. 



dred weak offences that are pardoned in the early- 
verse of men who make their mark as poets. 

After all, " Poems and Ballads " was a first book, 
though printed later than " Atalanta." The juvenile 
pieces which it contained, written during college life, 
are now announced for removal into a volume of ac- 
knowledged " Early Poems," including also the dra- 
mas of " Rosamond " and " The Queen Mother." But 
the original volume is of great interest, because it 
exhibits the germs of everything for which the author 
has become distinguished. Its spirit is that of un- 
bounded freedom, of resistance to an established ideal, 
— for Swinburne, with Shelley and kindred poets, has 
seen that finer ideals will take the place of those that 
are set aside. Meantime, in advance of a new reve- 
lation, he devoted himself to the expression of sensu- 
ous, even riotous beauty. Unequal as they are, these 
lyrics led up to work like " Atalanta," " Songs before 
Sunrise," and "Bothwell." They were the ferment of 
the heated fancy, and, though murky and unsettled, 
to be followed by clarity, sweetness, and strength. 
The fault of the book is excess. This poet, extrava- 
gant in spiritual or political revolt, in disdain, in 
dramatic outbursts, was no less so in his treatment 
of sensuous themes. He could not be otherwise, ex- 
cept when restrained by his artistic conscience in 
work modelled upon accepted forms. 

Among the earlier lyrics are to be numbered, I 
imagine, those mediaeval studies near the close of the 
volume which belong to the same class with much 
of Rossetti's and Morris's verse, yet never could be 
thought to come from any hand but Swinburne's 
own. Such are " The Masque of Queen Bersabe " 
(a miracle play), "A Christmas Carol," "St. Dorothy," 



EARLY LYRICS 



393 



and various ballads, — besides the " Laus Veneris," to 
which I already have referred. In other pieces we 
discover the influence which French art and litera- 
ture had exerted upon the author. His acquaintance 
with the round of French minstrelsy made it natural 
for him to produce a kind of work that at first would 
not be relished by the British taste and ear. The 
richness of the foreign qualities brought into English 
verse by Swinburne has made amends for a passing 
phase of Gallic sensualism. What now crosses the 
Channel is of a different breed from the stilted for- 
malism of Boileau. With the rise of Hugo and the 
new Romantic school came freedom, lyrical melody, 
and dramatic fire. Elsewhere in this volume we note 
the still more potential Hebraic influence. " Aholi- 
bah " is closely imitated from Hebrew prophecy, and 
" A Ballad of Burdens " is imbued with a similar 
spirit, reading like the middle choruses in "Atalanta." 
More classical studies, " Phaedra " and " At Eleusis," 
approach the grade of Landor's " Hellenics." The 
" Hymn to Proserpine " is a beautiful and noble 
poem, dramatically reviving the emotion of a pagan 
who chooses to die with his gods, and musical with 
cadences which this poet has made distinctly his own. 
"Anactoria" and "Dolores," two pieces against which 
special objection has been made, exhibit great beauty 
of treatment, and a mystical though abnormal feeling, 
and are quite too fine to lose. The author holds 
them to be dramatic studies, written for men and not 
for babes, and connects them with " The Garden of 
Proserpine " and " Hesperia," in order to illustrate 
the transition from passion to satiety, and thence to 
wisdom and repose. The little sonnet, " A Cameo," 
suggests the rationale of this conception, and the 
17* 



French, 



Hebraic, 



and classical 
influences. 



394 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 



Very fine 
■poetry. 



latter, I may add, is practically illustrated by a re- 
view of -Swinburne's own productions, from the " Poems 
and Ballads " up to " Bothwell." 

The value of the book consists in its fine poetry, 
and especially in the structure of that poetry, so full 
of lyrical revelations, of harmonies unknown before. 
Take any stanza of an apostrophe to the sea, in 
" The Triumph of Time " : — 

" O fair green-girdled mother of mine, 

Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain, 
Thy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine, 

Thy large embraces are keen like pain. 
Save me and hide me with all thy waves, 
Find me one grave of thy thousand graves, 
Those pure cold populous graves of thine, 

Wrought without hand in a world without stain." 

Or take any couplet from " Anactoria," that musical 
and fervent poem, whose imagination and expression 
are so welded together, and wherein the English 
heroic verse is long sustained at a height to which 
it rarely has ventured to aspire : — 

"Yea, thou shalt be forgotten like spilt wine, 
Except these kisses of my lips on thine 
Brand them with immortality ; but me — 
Men shall not see bright fire nor hear the sea, 
Nor mix their hearts with music, nor behold 
Cast forth of heaven with feet of awful gold 
And plumeless wings that make the bright air blind, 
Lightning, with thunder for a hound behind 
Hunting through fields unfurrowed and unsown, — 
But in the light and laughter, in the moan 
And music, and in grasp of lip and hand 
And shudder of water that makes felt on land 
The immeasurable tremor of all the sea, 
Memories shall mix and metaphors of me." 

A certain amount of such writing is bold and fine. 



METRICAL VARIATIONS. 



395 



The public knows, however, that it was carried by 
Swinburne to excess ; that in erotic verse a confec- 
tion of luscious and cloying epithets was presented 
again and again. At times there was an extravagance 
which would have been absent if this poet, who has 
abundant wit and satire, had also then had a hearty 
sense of humor, and which he himself must smile at 
now. But go further, and observe his original hand- 
ling of metres, as in the " Hymn to Proserpine " : — 

" Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean ? but these thou shalt not take, 
The laurel, the palms, and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs 
in the brake"; 

and in " Hesperia " : — 

" Out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without 
shore is, 
Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fulness of joy, 
As a wind sets in with the autumn that blows from the region 
of stories, 
Blows with a perfume of songs and of memories beloved from 
a boy." 

Examine, too, the remarkable group of songs, set to 
melodies so fresh and novel : among others, " Dedi- 
cation," " The Garden of Proserpine," " Madonna 
Mia," " Rococo," and " Before Dawn." If these have 
their faults, what wrinkle can any Sybarite find in 
such a rose-leaf as the lyric called " A Match " : — 

" If love were what the rose is, 

And I were like the leaf, 
Our lives would grow together 
In sad or singing weather, 
Blown fields or flowerful closes, 

Green pleasure or gray grief; 
If love were what the rose is, 

And I were like the leaf." 



Unwhole- 
some and 
fantastic 
extrava- 
gance, 



for which 
we are com- 
pensated by 
novel and 
beautiful 
effects of 
rhythm. 



396 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 



"Ave atque 
Vale" : a 
lofty elegiac 
ode. 



The tender and pious stanzas in memory of Lan- 
dor are included among these lyrics. The collection, 
after we have noted its weaknesses, extravagance, lack 
of technical and moral restraint, still remains the 
most striking, the most suggestive volume of miscel- 
laneous poems that has been offered by any poet of 
the younger schools. And it must be confessed that 
since its appearance, and after the period of growth 
which it represents, not a note has been uttered by 
its author to which the most rigid of moralists can 
honestly object. 

The full bloom of his lyrical genius appears not 
only in the choruses of " Atalanta," but in that large- 
moulded ode, " Ave atque Vale," composed in memory 
of Charles Baudelaire. It is founded on the model 
of famous English prototypes, to wit, the " Epitaph of 
Bion." If unequal to " Lycidas " in idyllic feeling, 
or to " Adonais " in lofty scorn and sorrow, it is more 
imaginative than the former, and surpasses either in 
continuity of tone and the absolute melody of elabo- 
rate verse. Arnold's " Thyrsis " is a wise and manly 
poem, closely adjusted to the classic phrase ; but 
here is an ethereal strain of the highest elegiac or- 
der, fashioned in a severe yet flexible spirit of lyric 
art. In stanzaic beauty it ranks, with Keats's odes, 
among our rarest examples. Critics who have sat at 
the feet of Wordsworth should remember that Swin- 
burne, in youth, was powerfully affected by the poetry 
of the wild and gifted author of "Les Fleurs du 
Mai." This threnody comes as directly from the 
heart as those of Shelley or Arnold lamenting Keats 
or Clough. Baudelaire and his group constituted 
what might be termed the Franco-Sapphic school. 
Their spirit pervades many of the " Poems and Bal- 



Baudelaire. 



'AVE ATQUE VALE. 



397 



lads"; but Swinburne, more fortunate than his teacher, 
has lived to outlive this phase, and is nearing his 
visioned " Hesperia " of strength and luminous calm. 
The " Ave atque Vale " is a perfect example of the 
metrical affluence that renders his verse a marvel. It 
is found in the opening lines : — 

"Shall I strew on thee rose, or rue, or laurel, 
Brother, on this that was the veil of thee ?'" — 

The second stanza, recalling the dead poet's favor- 
ite ideal, is highly characteristic : — 

"For always thee the fervid, languid glories 
Allured of heavier suns in mightier skies ; 
Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighs 

Where the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories, 
The barren kiss of piteous wave to wave, 
That knows not where is that Leucadian grave 

Which hides too deep the supreme head of song." 

An imagination like that of " Hyperion " is found 
in other stanzas : — 

"Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over, 
Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet, 
Hast thou found place at the great knees and feet 
Of some pale Titan-woman like a lover, 
Such as thy vision here solicited, 
Under the shadow of her fair vast head, 
The deep division of prodigious breasts, 
The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep, 
The weight of awful tresses that still keep 
The savor and shade of old-world pine-forests 
Where the wet hill-winds weep ? " — 

In one sense the motive thought is below the tech- 
nical grandeur of the poem. Its ideals are Sappho, 
Proserpine, Apollo, and the Venus of Baudelaire, — 
not the Cytherean, but the Gothic Venus "of the 



Metrical 
affluence. 



398 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWLNBURNE. 



Tribute to 
the 77iemory 
of Gatitier. 
1872. 



Swinburne's 
?ift of 
tongues. 



See page 62. 



hollow hill." The round of Baudelaire's conceptions 
is thus pursued, after the antique fashion, with ex- 
quisite and solemn power. The tone is not one of 
high laudation, but of a minstrel who recalls the dead 
as he was, — a chant of sorrow and appreciation, not 
of hope. What extravagance there may be is in the 
passion and poetry lavished upon the theme. It is 
an ode -written for persons of delicate culture ; no 
one else can grasp the allusions, though who so dull 
as not to be captivated by the sound ! But the same 
may be said of " Adonais " or " Hylas " j and here 
again recurs the question asked concerning Landor, 
Shall not the wise, as well as the witless, have their 
poets ? 

The " Memorial Verses on the Death of Theophile 
Gautier" are also beautiful. They are composed in a 
grave form of quatrain resembling, though with a dif- 
ference, FitzGerald's version of the " Rubaiyat of Omar 
Khayyam." The elegy is the longest of our author's 
contributions to a volume in which eighty poets of 
France, Italy, and England united to lay upon the 
tomb of Gautier a wreath more profuse with laurels 
than any other which has been recorded in the history 
of elegiac song. Swinburne's portion of this remark- 
able tribute includes, also, an English sonnet, a son- 
net and an ode in French, and Greek and Latin 
verses such as, I think, no other of the chanting 
multitude could have composed. A word in respect 
to his talent for this kind of work. Possibly Landor 
was a more ready Latinist, but no Englishman has 
written Greek elegiac to equal either the dedication 
of " Atalanta " or the Gautier " inscriptions " con- 
tained in this memorial volume. Having spoken of 
the uselessness of Landor's classical exploits, I would 



GREEK AND LATIN VERSES. 



399 



here add that their uselessness relates to the audi- 
ence, and not to the poet. The effect of such prac- 
tice upon himself and Swinburne would of itself argue 
for this amendment. The younger poet's own language 
is so modest and suggestive, that in repeating what 
was privately uttered I simply do him justice by 
stating his position better than it can otherwise be 
stated. " The value of modern Latin or Greek verse," 
he says, "depends, I think, upon the execution. Good 
verse, at any time, is a good thing, and a change of 
instrument now and then is good practice for the 

performer's hand I confess that I take delight 

in the metrical forms of any language of which I 
know anything whatever, simply for the metre's sake, 
as a new musical instrument; and, as soon as I can, 
I am tempted to try my hand or my voice at a new 
mode of verse, like a child trying to sing before it 
can speak plain." In short, to a poet like Swinburne 
diversions of this kind have a practical value, even 
though they seem to be those of a knight tilting at 
a wayside tournament as he rides on his votive 
quest. 

We have dwelt so long upon the lyrics as to have 
little space for examination of more recent and im- 
portant works My object has been to observe the 
development of the poet's genius, and thence derive 
an estimate of his present career. From 1867 to 
187 1 he gave his ardent sympathy to the cause of 
European freedom, exerting himself in laudation, al- 
most in apotheosis, of the republican heroes and 
martyrs. Possibly his radical tendency was strength- 
ened in youth by association with a sturdy grandsire, 
the late Sir John Swinburne, who was a personal 
friend of Mirabeau, and to the last of his ninety- 



His own 
statement of 
the value of 
modem 
latin or 
Greek 
vet'se. 



Revolution- 
ary poems. 



400 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 



"A Song of 

Italy," 1867. 



" Ode on the 
French 
Republic" 
1870. 



"Songs be- 
fore Sun- 
rise" 1871. 



eight years an ultra-liberal of the French revolu- 
tionary school. The democratic poets of this century 
— men like Landor, Shelley, Hugo, Swinburne — often 
are to be found among those of patrician birth and 
culture. Swinburne, as if tired of art followed for its 
own sake, threw his soul into the struggle of the 
French and Italian patriots. A So?ig of Italy is 
marked by sonorous eloquence, and carries us buoy- 
antly along ; yet, despite its splendid apostrophes to 
Mazzini and Garibaldi, it was not a poem to be 
widely received and to stir the common heart. It 
appeals to the lover of high poetry rather than to 
votaries of the cause. The Ode on the French Republic 
was less worthy of the author, and not equal to its 
occasion. It bears the stamp of work composed for 
a special event as plainly as some of Southey's or 
Wordsworth's laureate odes. We may apply to it a 
portion of Swinburne's own censure of a far nobler 
poem, Lowell's " Commemoration Ode," of which 
many an isolated line is worth more to a great nation 
than the whole French ode can ever be to them that 
love France. Songs befo?-e Sunrise may be taken as 
the crowning effort of the author during the period 
just named. It is a series of lofty and imposing odes, 
exhibiting Swinburne's varied lyrical powers and his 
most earnest traits of character. The conflict of day 
with night before the sunrise of freedom is rehearsed 
in twoscore pieces, which chant the democratic up- 
rising of Continental Europe and the outbreak in 
Crete. Grouped together, the effect is that of a strong 
symphonic movement ; yet much of it is tumultuous 
and ineffective. The prolonged earnestness fags the 
reader, and helps a cause less than might some pop- 
ular lyric or soldier's hymn. A trace of the spas- 



PROSE WRITINGS. 



401 



modic manner injures much of Swinburne's revolu- 
tionary verse. Yet here are powerful single poems : 
"The Watch in the Night," " Hertha," the "Hymn 
of Man," and " Perinde ac Cadaver." "Hertha" rates 
high among the author's pieces, having so much lyric 
force and music united with condensed and clarified 
thought. " The Eve of Revolution " is like the sound 
of a trumpet, and charged with fiery imagination, a 
fit companion-piece to Coleridge's finest ode. 

In Swinburne's poems we do not perceive the love 
of nature which was so passionate an element in the 
spirit and writings of Shelley, that exile from the 
hearts and households of his fellow-men. Were he 
compelled to follow art as a means of subsistence 
and to suit his work to the market, it would be more 
condensed and practical, yet would, I think, lose some- 
thing of its essential flavor. After all, he has been 
an industrious man of letters, devoted to literature 
as a matter of love and religion. The exhaustive 
essays upon Blake and Chapman, his various pref- 
aces and annotations, and his criticisms of Arnold, 
Morris, and Hugo, among other professional labors, 
are fresh in mind. The prose, like the poetry, is 
unflagging and impetuous beyond that of other men. 
No modern writer, save De Quincey, has sustained 
himself so easily and with such cumulative force 
through passages which strain the reader's mental 
power. His organ of expression is so developed that 
no exercise of it seems to produce brain-weariness, 
and he does not realize that others are subject to that 
kind of fatigue. 

He rarely takes up the critical pen unless to pay 
honor to a work he admires, or to confront some foe 
with dangerous satire and wrath. His language is so 



No marked 
passionfor 
nature. 



Critical and 
other prose 
essays. 



402 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 



A brilliant 
and origi- 
nal, but 7Wt 
always judi- 
cial mi?id. 



" Under the 
Microscope" 
1872. 



Thoughtless 
estimate of 
A merican 
foets. 



enthusiastic that it does not always convince ; in fact, 
his rhetoric and generous partisanship lessen his ju- 
dicial authority. His writings often are too learned. 
Scholarship is a second nature with him ■ he is not 
obscure, like Browning, but his allusions are so famil- 
iar to himself that he cannot bring them to the level 
of popular comprehension. Nor can he, however laud- 
atory of the masters he affected in youth, look upon 
other modern poets except with the complacency felt 
by one who listens to a stranger's rude handling of 
the native tongue. His command of verse is so be- 
yond that of any other Briton, that poets of different 
grades must seem to him pretty much alike, and their 
relative gifts scarcely worth distinguishing. By the 
law of attractions I should expect to see him inter- 
ested in verse of the most bald and primeval form. 
Many excel him in humor, simplicity, range of in- 
ventive power. But contend with him in rhythm, 
and, though you are Thor himself, you are trying to 
drain the horn of which one end is open to the sea. 
While recognizing his thorough honesty, I do not 
assent to his judgment of American poets. In 
Under the Microscope he pays a tribute to Poe, and 
has a just understanding of the merits and defects 
of Whitman. His denunciation of all the rest, as 
either mocking-birds in their adherence to models, 
or corn-crakes in the harshness and worthlessness of 
their original song, results, it is plain, not from preju- 
dice, but from ignorance of the atmosphere which per- 
vades American life. A poet must sing for his own 
people. Whitman, for instance, well and boldly avows 
himself the mouthpiece of our democratic nationality. 
Aside from the unconscious formalism that injures his 
poems, and which Swinburne has pointed out, he has 



AMERICAN POETS. 



403 



done what he could, and we acknowledge the justice 
shown to one, at least, of our representative men. 
But to cite other examples, — and a few are enough 
for this digression, — if Swinburne thoroughly under- 
stood the deep religious sentiment, the patriotism, the 
tender aspiration, of the best American homes, he 
would perceive that our revered Whittier had fairly 
expressed these emotions ; would comprehend the na- 
tional affection which discerns quality even in his 
faults, and originality and music in his fervent strains. 
And if he could feel the mighty presence of American 
woods and waters, he would see how simply and 
grandly the author of " Thanatopsis," " A Forest 
Hymn," and " The Night Journey of a River," had 
communed with nature, and acknowledge the Doric 
strength and purity of his imaginative verse. Our 
figure-school is but lately founded ; landscape-art and 
sentiment have had to precede it ; but, again, cannot 
even a foreign critic find in poems like Lowell's " The 
Courtin"' an idyllic truth that Theocritus might re- 
joice in, all that can be made of the New England 
dialect, and pictures full of sweetness and feeling? 
Of this much I am confident, and this much will 
serve. America is not all frontier, and her riper 
thought and life are reflected in her literature. Our 
poets may avail themselves of " the glory that was 
Greece " with as much justice and originality as any 
British minstrel. The artist claims all subjects, times, 
and places for his own. Bryant, Emerson, Whittier, 
Lowell, Longfellow, — to cite no lesser or younger 
names, — are esteemed by a host of their countrymen 
who can read between the lines ; their poems are the 
music of a land to which British authors now must 
look for the largest and ever-growing portion of their 



404 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWLNBURNE. 



" Chastel- 
ard" 1865. 



A romantic 

historical 

drai7ia. 



The poet's 
conception 
0/ Mary 
Stuart. 



own constituency. Each one of these poets as truly 
represents his country as any of their comrades who 
secure foreign attention by claiming a special prerog- 
ative in this office. 



IV. 

To return to Chastelard, which appeared close after 
" Atalanta," but in order of composition, as I have 
said, is known to have preceded the classical drama. 
The latter poem seemed flooded with moonlight, but 
" Chastelard " is warm-blooded and modern, charged 
with lurid passion and romance. As a historical 
tragedy it was a direct test of the dramatic powers 
of the author, and it is as a dramatic poet that he 
must be chiefly regarded. In this play we see the 
ripening of the genius that in youth produced -" The 
Queen Mother," and to me it has far more interest 
than Swinburne's political lyrics. Mary Stuart and 
her " four Maries " are the women of the piece ; 
Chastelard, her minstrel-lover, and Darnley, the lead- 
ing men ; Knox, who is to figure so grandly in another 
and greater work, drifts as a gloomy and portentous 
shadow across the scene. The poem opens with an 
exquisitely light French song of the period. A fine 
romantic flavor, smacking of the " dance and Pro- 
vencal song," pervades the interludes of the tragedy. 
The interest centres in the charm wrought by Mary 
upon Chastelard, although he knows the cruelty of 
one who toys with him while her ambition suffers 
him to be put to death. The dungeon-scene, in which 
he foregoes the Queen's pardon, is very powerful. 
Swinburne may almost be said to have discovered 
Mary Stuart. Upon his conception of her character 



chastelard: 



405 



he lavishes his strength ; she becomes the historic 
parallel of the Gothic Venus, loving love rather than 
her lover, full of passion, full of softness and beauty, 
full of caprice, vengeance, and deceit. She says of 
herself : — 

" Nay, dear, I have 
No tears in me ; I never shall weep much, 
I think, in all my life ; I have wept for wrath 
Sometimes, and for mere pain, but for love's pity 
I cannot weep at all. I would to God 
You loved me less ; I give you all I can 
For all this love of yours, and yet I am sure 
I shall live out the sorrow of your death 
And be glad afterwards." 

Yet this royal Lamia, when with a lover (and she 
never is without one), is so much passion's slave as 
to invite risks which certainly will be the death of 
her favorite, and possibly her own ruin. In depict- 
ing her as she moves through the historic changes of 
her life Swinburne has fortunately chosen a theme 
well suited to him. Mary Beaton, who in secret 
adores Chastelard, serves as a foil to the Queen, and 
is an equally resolute character. The execution scene 
is strongly managed, with thrilling dialogue between 
this Mary and Mary Carmichael ; at the end room is 
made for my lord of Bothwell, next the Queen. 
Though alive with poetry and passion, this play, like 
" Atalanta," is restrained within artistic bounds. It 
has less mannerism than we find in most of the au- 
thor's early style. The chief personages are drawn 
strongly and distinctly, and the language of the Scot- 
tish citizens, burgesses, courtiers, etc., is true to the 
matter and the time. The whole play is intensely 
emotional, the scenes and dialogue are vigorously 
conceived, and it must be owned that " Chastelard " 



Choice of 
theme. 



406 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 



'■' Bothwell,'' 
1874. 



The author 
i?i the front 
rank of 
■modern dra- 
matic poets. 



"Bothwell '," 
an epic in 
dramatic 
form. 



was a remarkable essay for a poet of Swinburne's 
age at the date of its production. 

Nevertheless, youth is the time to feel, and there- 
fore for a poet to illustrate, the extreme abandonment 
of delirious but unselfish passion. The second and 
greater portion of the Stuart trilogy required a man 
to write it. Now that almost a decade of creative 
and somewhat tempestuous experience has strength- 
ened, calmed, and otherwise perfected Swinburne's 
faculties, he completes the grand historical poem of 
Bothwell ; a prodigious work in every way, — possibly 
the longest five-act drama ever written, and, at least, 
longer than any whose power and interest have not 
given out before the close. The time has not yet 
come to determine its place in English literature. 
But I agree with them who declare that Swinburne, 
by this massive and heroic composition, has placed 
himself in the front line of our poets ; that no one 
can be thought his superior in true dramatic power. 
The work not only is large, but written in a large 
manner. It seems deficient in contrasts, especially 
needing the relief which humor, song and by-play af- 
ford to a tragic plot. But it is a great historical 
poem, cast in a dramatic rather than epic form, for 
the sake of stronger analysis and dialogue. Consid- 
ered as a dramatic epic, it has no parallel, and is 
replete with proofs of laborious study and faithful 
use of the rich materials afforded by the theme. Ar- 
tistically speaking, this painstaking has checked the 
movement ; even so free and ardent a genius is ham- 
pered by scholarship, on which Jonson prided himself, 
though imagination served Shakespeare's turn. 

On the other hand, " Bothwell " is a genuine con- 
tribution to history. The subject has grown upor 



bothwell: 



407 



the poet. This section of the trilogy is many times 
the length of " Chastelard." " Things, now, that bear 
a weighty and a serious brow " are set before the 
reader. Great affairs of state hang at poise ; Rizzio, 
Darnley, Murray, Gordon, Knox, Bothwell, and the 
Queen are made to live or die in our presence, and 
the most of them are tangled in a red and desperate 
coil. Mary's character has hardened ; she has grown 
more reckless, fuller of evil passion, and now is not 
only a murderess by implication, but, outraged by the 
slaughter of Rizzio, becomes a murderess in fact. 
The sum of her iniquities is recounted by Knox in 
his preachment to the citizens of Edinburgh. That 
wonderful harangue seems to me the most sustained 
and characteristic passage in modern verse ; but even 
this Mary Stuart, who " washed her feet " in the 
blood of her lovers, — even she has found her tamer 
in the brutal and ruthless Bothwell, who towers like 
a black demon throughout the play. Nevertheless, 
amid her cruelties and crimes, we discover, from her 
very self-abandonment to the first really strong man 
she has met, that her falseness has been the reac- 
tion of a fine nature warped and degraded by the 
feeble creatures hitherto imposed upon her. Such 
love as she had for the beautiful was given to her 
poet and her musician, to Chastelard and Rizzio ; 
but only the virile and heroic can fully satisfy her 
own nature and master it for good or evil. Under 
certain auspices, from her youth up, she might have 
been a paragon of love, sovereignty, and womanhood. 
Among the various notable passages in this drama 
are : the death of Rizzio, the scenes before and after 
the murder of Darnley, the interviews between Both- 
well and Mary in Hermitage Castle and elsewhere, 



The Queen 
of Scots. 



Notable pas- 
sages and 
scenes. 






408 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 



Bothwell. 



Mary. 



the populace harangued by Knox ; finally, the clos- 
ing speech of the Queen to Mary Beaton, whose 
sinister avowal, 

" But I will never leave you till you die ! " 

connects the entire plot with that ominous future, 
whose story, ever deepening in gloom, has yet to 
make the trilogy complete. " Bothwell " exhibits no 
excess but that of length, and no mannerism ; on the 
contrary, a superb manner, and a ripe, pure, and ma- 
jestic style. To show the strength, richness, and 
dramatic variety of Swinburne's mature language, let 
us take a few extracts from the dialogue of this 
historical play, with its threescore personages and as 
many shifting scenes. The first portrays the soldier, 
Bothwell : — 

" Queen. Does your wound pain you ? 

Bothwell. What, I have a wound? 

Queen. How should one love enough, though she gave all, 
"Who had your like to love ? I pray you tell me, 
How did you fight ? 

Bothwell. Why, what were this to tell? 

I caught this riever, by some chance of God, 
That put his death into mine hand, alone, 
And charged him ; foot to foot we fought some space, 
And he fought well ; a gallant knave, God wot, 
And worth a sword for better soldier's work 
Than these thieves' brawls ; I would have given him life 
To ride among mine own men here and serve, 
But he would nought ; so being sore hurt i' the thigh, 
I pushed apon him suddenly, and clove 
His crown through to the chin." 

The second is from the lips of Mary, shut up in 
Lochleven Castle : — 

" Queen. Ay, we were fools, we Maries twain, and thought 
To be into the summer back again 



BOTH WELL. 



409 



And see the broom blow in the golden world, 

The gentle broom on hill. For all men's talk 

And all things come and gone yet, yet I find 

I am not tired of that I see not here, 

The sun, and the large air, and the sweet earth, 

And the hours that hum like fire-flies on the hills 

As they burn out and die, and the bowed heaven, 

And the small clouds that swim and swoon i' the sun, 

And the small flowers." 

Lastly, a few powerful lines from Knox's terrific 
indictment of the Queen : — 

" John Knox Then shall one say, 

Seeing these men also smitten, as ye now 
Seeing them that bled before to do her good, 
God is not mocked; and ye shall surely know 
What men were these and what man he that spake 
The things I speak now prophesying, and said 
That if ye spare to shed her blood for shame, 
For fear or pity of her great name or face, 
God shall require of you the innocent blood 
Shed for her fair face' sake, and from your hands 
Wring the price forth of her blood-guiltiness." 

. . . . " Her reign and end 
Shall be like Athaliah's, as her birth 
Was from the womb of Jezebel, that slew 
The prophets, and made foul with blood and fire 
The same land's face that now her seed makes foul 
With whoredoms and with witchcrafts ; yet they say 
Peace, where is no peace, while the adulterous blood 
Feeds yet with life and sin the murderous heart 
That hath brought forth a wonder to the world 
And to all time a terror ; and this blood 
The hands are clean that shed, and they that spare 
In God's just sight spotted as foul as Cain's." 

The exceptions taken against poems of Swinburne's 
youth will not hold in respect to this fine production. 
The most serious charge that can be brought is that 
18 



John Knox. 



4io 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 



Length of 
this poem. 



Restraint 
an element 
of perfect 
art. 



See page i. 



of its undue length, and as to this the judgments of 
different readers will be as various as their tempera- 
ments. " Bothwell " is a work for vigorous minds, 
and to such it must always seem the bloom of beauty 
and power. I think it would be fortunate if some 
new outlet of expression could be made for the dra- 
matic spirit of our time. Men like Browning and 
Swinburne do not readily become playwrights ; the 
stage now requires of a drama that it shall be written 
in sparkling prose or the lightest of verse, and, of the 
author, cleverness and ingenuity rather than poetic 
greatness. It would not injure this writer to shape 
his work for a direct hearing, to be restricted by the 
limits of an arbitrary system ; but might have upon 
these historical tragedies a gracious effect like that 
which resulted from the antique method applied to 
his " Atalanta." Ritualism, the bane of less prolific 
natures, is what such a man need not fear. Ease of 
circumstances has not made an amateur of this artist 
and enthusiast ; nevertheless, in his case, the benefits 
of professional independence are nearly balanced by 
the ills. 



V. 

Taine brings a great cloud of examples to show 
that each period shapes the work and fortunes of its 
authors, but ir^s equally true that men of genius 
create new modes, and often determine the nature of 
periods yet to come. Swinburne may live to see the 
time and himself in correspondence. To me he seems 
the foremost of the younger school of British poets. 
The fact that a man is not yet haloed with the light 
that comes only when, in death or in hoary age, he 



HIS GENIUS AND WORKS. 



411 



recalls to us the past, need not debar him from full 
recognition. A critic must be quick to estimate the 
present. For some years, as I have observed the 
successive efforts of this poet, a feeling of his genius 
has grown upon me, derived not only from his prom- 
ise, but from what he actually has done. If he were 
to write no more, and his past works should be col- 
lected in a single volume, — although, as in the re- 
mains of Shelley, we might find little narrative-verse, 
what a world of melody, and what a wealth of imagi- 
native song ! It is true that his well-known manner 
would pervade the book ; we should find no great 
variety of mood, few studies of visible objects, a 
meagre reflection of English life as it exists to-day. 
Yet a subtile observer would perceive how truly he 
represents his own time, and to a poet this compen- 
dium would become a lyrical hand-book, a treasured 
exposition of creative and beautiful design. 

Acknowledging the presence of true genius, minor 
objections are of small account. A poet may hold 
himself apart, or from caprice may do things un- 
worthy of his noblest self, but we think of him al- 
ways as at his best. The gift is not so common ; 
let us value it while it is here. Let us also do 
justice to the world, — to the world that, remember- 
ing its past errors, no longer demands of great wits 
that they should wholly forego madness. Fifty years 
ago, and Swinburne, for his eccentricities and dis- 
dain, might have been an exile like Byron and Shel- 
ley, or, for his republicanism, imprisoned like Leigh 
Hunt. We have learned that poets gather from strange 
experiences what they teach in song. If rank un- 
wholesome flowers spring from too rich a soil, in the 
end a single fruitful blossoming will compensate us 



A mount 
and richness 
of the work 
already ac- 
complished 
by this poet. 



Genius to be 
measured at 
its best. 



412 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 



Application. 



Retrospec- 
tive sum- 
mary. 

The Geor- 
gian era : 
1790- 1824. 



A transition 
feriod. 



Victorian 
foets. 



for the sterile flews du mal of youth. Lastly, Swin- 
burne has been said to lack application, but ten years 
of profuse and consecutive labors refute the charge. 
Works like his are not produced without energy and 
long industrious hours. If done at a heat, the slow 
hidden fire has never ceased its burning. Who shall 
dictate to a poet his modes and tenses, or his choice 
of work ? But all this matters nothing ; the entire 
host of traditional follies need not abash us if, with 
their coming, we have a revival of the olden passion 
and the olden power. 



During the Georgian era a romantic sentimentalism, 
exalted to passion in the utterance of Byron, was the 
dominating spirit of British verse. The more subtile 
but slowly maturing influence of the Lake school, and 
that of the idealists Shelley and Keats, did not lay 
firm hold upon the immediate generation. Their effect 
was not wholly apparent until the beginning of our 
own time. Nevertheless, a few poets, among whom 
Hunt and Procter were notable, extended it over a 
transition period, and finally saw it become a general 
and potent force. The reader now has observed the 
technical finish, the worship of pure beauty, and the 
revival of classical taste, discernible, before the work 
of Keats, in the artistic method of Landor, — a poet 
who so recently ended his career. These constituents, 
more fully developed by the exquisite genius of Keats, 
were to mark the outward features of English metri- 
cal literature during the refined era whose poets have 
been included under this review ; whose spirit, more- 
over, suggested that contemplative method which rose 
to imagination in the high discourse of Wordsworth, 



RETROSPECTIVE SUMMARY. 



413 



and too often sinks to didacticism in the perplexed 
and timorous strains of his disciples. 

After passion, — reflection, taste, repose ; and such 
have been the qualities displayed by numbers of the 
Victorian poets in the contemplation of beauty and 
knowledge, and in the production of their composite 
verse. At last a Neo-Romantic school, of which 
Browning and Rossetti have been leaders, is engaged 
in a nervous effort to reunite beauty and passion in 
rhythmical art. Swinburne, beyond the rest, having 
carried expression to its farthest extreme, obeys a 
healthful impulse, seeking to renew the true dramatic 
vigor and thus begin another cycle of creative song. 
Even Tennyson, in the mellow ripeness of his fame, 
perceives that the mission of the idyllist is ended, and 
extends to the latest movement his adherence and prac- 
tical aid. Going outside his special genius and life- 
long wont, he now — through sheer intellectual force, 
and the skill made perfect by fifty years of practice — 
has composed, with deliberate forethought and consum- 
mate art, a drama that does not belie the name. With- 
out much imaginative splendor, it is at least objective 
and adapted to the fitness of things, and thus essen- 
tially different from Browning's essays toward a revival 
of the dramatic mould. On the other hand, it also dif- 
fers from the work of the Elizabethan dramatists, in 
that it is the result of a forced effort, while the models 
after which it is shaped were in their day an intui- 
tive form of expression, — the natural outgrowth of a 
thoroughly dramatic age. The very effort, however, is 
alike honorable to England's Laureate and significant 
of the present need. Wisdom, beauty, and passion — 
a blended trinity — constitute the poetic strength of 
every imaginative era, and memorably that of Shake- 



The present 
situation 
and outlook. 



Tennyson 1 
drama : 
''''Queen 
Mary," 
1875. 



Seepage 191. 



The constit- 
itents of 
great dra- 
matic verse. 



414 



RETROSPECTIVE SUMMARY. 



speare's time. So long as the true critic's faith, hope, 
and charity abide (and the greatest of these is charity), 
he will justify every well-timed, masterly effort to re- 
call the triune spirit of Britain's noblest and most 
enduring song. 



[End of the Original TexToI 



TWELVE YEARS LATER. 



A SUPPLEMENTARY REVIEW. 



1887. 

WITH respect to the poetry of Great Britain, 
the fancy may be indulged that this year's 
festivals not only celebrate the rounding ol a bril- 
liant and distinct period, but stand for a kind of 
Secular Games as well. It is just a century since 
Burns and Coleridge and Wordsworth were in the 
joy of that new dawn, when 

" To be young was very heaven " ; 

and no other land than theirs, meanwhile, has shown 
a more unbroken procession of imaginative poets. 
There was a brief nooning between the early and 
later rehearsals, but the music of great voices has 
never wholly stopped. This still is heard, though 
more than a decade of years ago it seemed, and 
rightly, as if the typical Victorian era were complete. 
But in the summer of the North the last hours of a 
day whose wings of light come near to touching its 
successor's, — although the winds fall and the chief 
workers mostly go to rest, — have a lustre of their 
own. The survival of influences that long since be- 
came historic is a chance coincidence with the pro- 
longation of a fortunate reign, and due to veteran 
leaders whose strength has been more than equal to 
their day. 



Limits of 
the typical 
Victoria?; 
Period. 



4 i6 



THE VICTORIAN SCHOOL. 



Survival 
of its lead- 
ers. 



Its specific 
character- 
istics. 



Tennyson and Browning, although two generations 
of younger men pay homage to them, have been, 
with the exception of Swinburne, the most unflag- 
ging poets of the recent interval. Moreover, — and 
maugre the flings of wits who judge them by trifles 
and failures, and who neither care for nor compre= 
hend their important work, — they have given us 
much that is up to the standard of their prime. In 
no respect have they been superannuated or piping 
out of date, — little as they have had to do with the 
jest and prettiness, the vivacious experiments, with 
which youth busies itself ere an hour comes for se- 
rious attention to the conduct of a new movement. 

Yet if literary eras, like those of Elizabeth and 
Anne, are characterized by a special style or spirit, 
that for which the Victorian is already historic, on 
its poetic side, results from certain idyllic and reflec- 
tive tendencies, with their interblendmgs and out- 
growths. It ceased to be dominant before 1875, 
going off, as I pointed out, into aesthetic neo-Ro- 
manticism on the one hand, and a sub-dramatic or 
psychological method on the other. If life may be 
judged by its mature and most prolonged activities, 
the Victorian school will be recognized as we have 
recognized it. It is beyond ordinary precedent that 
its two chief poets are still in voice, and still pre- 
eminent. Of Browning it may be said that he has 
bided his time, and now is the master of an enthu- 
siastic following. But even Tennyson has charged 
his later idyls with passion, and succeeded in mak- 
ing at least his lyrics dramatic. On the technical 
side, recent craftsmen take their cue from the forms, 
melody, color, of Swinburne and Rossetti. What dif- 
fers and is strictly novel, though much in vogue, 



ITS GREATEST LEADERS. 



417 



The poet's 
horoscope. 



seldom aspires to the higher range in which these 
elder leaders have moved almost alone. 

The conjectural length of a poet's life doubtless 
is not yet reckoned in the tables of insurance actu- 
aries. But the longevity of modern poets really 
seems to have been governed by their mental cast. 
The romancers, and the lyrists of great sensibility 
or intense experience, quicken their heart-beats and 
often have died young. Many poets of " self -rev- 
erence, self-knowledge, self-control," whose intellect 
is the regulator of well-ordered lives, have lived 
long : such men as Emerson and Longfellow in 
America — as Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning in 
England. The recent drift — and they have strength- 
ened it — has been toward the rule of intellect over 
passion, and the brain-power of such masters has 
maintained them in wonderful vitality and produc- 
tiveness to an advanced age. 

However this may be, the most suggestive portion 
of the record now before us is that concerned with 
the last-named poets. England alone can now boast 
of two so equal in years and ' fame, yet so distinct 
in genius, and still producing works unsurpassed by 
the efforts of their juniors. Like two brave galleys 
they still head the fleet, and with all sails spread, 
though the mists of an unknown sea are straight be- 
fore them. As for the Laureate, all England knows 
him by heart. Successive ranks of generous and 
cultured youths have doted on his works, so that 
his gradual age is watched and understood, some- 
what as in a family the bodily and mental changes 
of its revered master are observed by the household. 
At times his verse, and oftener than that of his 
more dramatic compeer's, has sprung from sudden 



Two noble 
kinsmen. 



418 



TENNYSON. 



Tennyson. 
Cp. Chaps. 
V., VI. 



His dra- 
matic 
efforts. 

cp.pp. 

191, 413. 



Minor 
Plays. 



outbursts of feeling, and never more so than in the 
fine heat and choler of his later years. New read- 
ers may not comprehend these moods, but they are 
intelligible to those who have owed him so much in 
the past, and do not affect our judgment of his long 
career. 



A good deal of force has been expended by the 
Laureate to disprove the claim that he would not 
greatly excel as a dramatist for either the closet or 
the stage. His mental and constructive gifts are 
such that, if he had begun as a " writer of plays," he 
doubtless would have been successful, — but never, 
I believe, could have reached his present eminence. 
His first drama, "Queen Mary," seemed to confirm 
an early prediction that he might yet produce a tol- 
erable work of that kind, though only by a tour de 
force. Since then, through strong will and persistency, 
he has composed a succession of dramas, historical 
and romantic ; but neither will nor judgment, nor 
the ambition to prove his mastery of the highest 
and most inclusive form of literature, has enabled 
him in the afternoon of life to triumph as a drama- 
tist. The first actor of England, with matchless re- 
sources for theatrical presentation, was able more 
than once to make the performance of a play by 
Tennyson a notable and picturesque event, but noth- 
ing more ; nor have those produced with equal care 
by others become any part of the stage repertory. 
There are charmingly poetic qualities in the minor 
pieces, and one of them, " The Cup," is not without 
effects, — but even this will not hold the stage, — 
while "The Falcon " and "The Promise of May" are 



HIS DRAMATIC EFFORTS. 



419 



Tragedies. 



"Harold," 1 
1876. 



plainly amateurish. They contain lovely songs and 
trifles, but when a great master merges the poet in 
the playwright he must be judged accordingly. Har- 
old and Becket are of a more imposing cast, and 
have significance as examples of what may — and 
of what may not — be effected by a strong artist in a 
department to which he is not led by compulsive 
instinct. Their ancestral themes are in every way 
worthy of an English poet. " Harold," in style and 
language, is much like the Idyls of the King, nor 
does it greatly surpass them in dramatic quality, 
though a work cast in the standard five-act mould. 
There is a strong scene where the last of the Saxon 
kings is forced to swear allegiance to William of 
Normandy. As a whole, the work is conventional, its 
battle-scenes reminiscent of Shakespeare and Scott, 
and the diction tinged with the author's old manner- 
isms. " Becket," seven years later, is his nearest 
approach to a dramatic masterpiece, and at a differ- 
ent time might have ranged itself in stage-literature. 
It is quite superior, as such, to pieces by Talfourd, 
Knowles, etc., that are still revived ; but this is poor 
praise indeed for one of Tennyson's fame, and as- 
suredly not worth trying for. It must be admitted 
that years of self-abstraction, of intimacy with books 
and nature, are not likely to develop the gift of 
even a born novelist or dramatic poet. Human life 
is his proper study : his task the expression of its 
struggle, passion, mirth and sorrow, virtue and crime, 
— and these must be transcribed by one that has 
been whirled in their eddies or who observes them 
very closely from the shore. 

In striking contrast, Tennyson's recent lyrical po- 
etry is the afterglow of a still radiant genius. Here 



"Becket* 

1884. 



Lyrical 
Verse. 



420 



LATER LYRICS. 



■' Ballads, 
and Other 
Poems,'''' 
18S0. 



" Tiresias, 
and Other 
Poems,'' 
1885. 



we see undimmed the fire and beauty of his natural 
gift, and wisdom increased with age. What a col- 
lection, short as it is, forms the volume of Ballads 
issued in his seventy-first year ! It opens with the 
thoroughly English story of "The First Quarrel," 
with its tragic culmination, — 

" And the boat went down that night, — the boat went down 
that night ! " 

Country life is what he has observed, and he re- 
flects it with truth of action and dialect. " The 
Northern Cobbler" and "The Village Wife" could 
be written only by the idyllist whose Yorkshire bal- 
lads delighted us in 1866. But here are greater 
things, two or three at his highest mark. The passion 
and lyrical might of " Rizpah " never have been ex- 
ceeded by the author, nor, I think, by any other poet 
of his day. " The Revenge " and " Lucknow " are 
magnificent ballads. " Sir John Oldcastle " and " Co- 
lumbus " are not what Browning would have made 
of them ; but, again, " The Voyage of Maeldune " is a 
weird and vocal fantasy, unequally poetic, with the 
well-known touch in every number. Five years later 
another book of purely Tennysonian ballads ap- 
peared. Its title-piece, Tiresias, may be classed with 
"Lucretius" and "Tithonus," yet scarcely equals the 
one as a study, or the other for indefinable poetic 
charm. " The Wreck " and " Despair " are full of 
power, and there are two more of the unique dia- 
lect-pieces, " To-morrow " and " The Spinster's Sweet- 
'arts." A final Arthurian idyl, " Balin and Balan," 
is below the level of the work whose bulk it en- 
larges. "The Charge of the Heavy Brigade," much 
inferior to the Balaklavan lyric, shows that will can- 



THE SECOND " LOCKSLEY HALU 



42 1 



not supply the heat excited by a thrilling and in- 
stant occasion. 

A poem in this volume, "The Ancient Sage," con- 
sists of speculations on the Nameless, — and on the 
universal question which presents itself ever more 
strenuously as life's shadows lengthen. In this sense, 
it is of kin to Browning's " Ferishtah " and " Jo- 
channan Hakkadosh." Still more noteworthy is the 
impetuous elegiac " Vastness," written in 1885, and 
as yet not placed in a collection. The persiflage 
bestowed upon this, and afterward, in various quar- 
ters, upon the second Locksley Hall, proclaimed the 
rise of a generation not wonted to the poet's habit 
of speech ; more, it revealed one out of patience 
with its creeds, and consoling itself by avoiding res- 
olute thought upon what confronts and challenges 
our mortality. Tennyson, smitten by the death of a 
friend, reflects that not here alone dear faces steadily 



vanish. 



but 



" Many a planet by many a sun may roll with the dust of a van- 
ish'd race." 

In the knowledge of this, what are all our politics, 
turmoil, love, ambition, but " a trouble of ants in 
the gleam of a million million of suns " ? What is 
it all, forsooth, if at last we end, 

" Swallowed in Vastness, lost in Silence, drown'd in the deeps of 
a meaningless Past " ? 

As was natural, the sequel to " Locksley Hall " was 
received with more than curiosity — with a certain 
philosophical interest. I do not see that it is out of 
temper with that fervid chant which, forty-five years 
before, seized upon all young hearts and caught the 
ear of the world. Here is the same protest against 



" Locksley 
Hall Sixty 
Years 
After," 
1886. 



422 



THE PEERAGE. 



conditions : in youth, a revolt from convention and 
class-tyranny ; in age, a protest against lawlessness 
The poe?s and irreverence. The poet now as then resists the 
youth and ma i n grievance — but with an old man's increased 
petulance of speech. His after-song does not wreak 
itself upon the master passions of love and ambition, 
and hence fastens less strongly on the thoughts of 
the young ; nor does it come with the unused rhythm, 
the fresh and novel cadence, that stamped the now 
hackneyed measure with a lyric's name. Yet, as to 
its art and imagery, the same effects are there, dif- 
fering only in a more vigorous method, an inten- 
tional roughness, from the individual early verse. 
The new burthen is termed pessimistic, but for all 
its impatient summary of ills, it ends with a cry of 
faith. And so ends " Vastness " : — 



" Peace, let it be ! for I loved him, and love him forever 
dead are not dead but alive."' 



the 



If Browning is more intelligibly an optimist, it is be- 
cause he studies mankind from a scientific point of 
view, keeping his own temper and spirits withal. He 
has a more abiding and " saving faith" in the im- 
manence of a beneficent ruling power. Both these 
poets have deepened and widened their outlook : the 
one listens to the roll of the ages, and marks the 
courses of the stars ; the other pierces the soul, to 
find the secret of a universe in the microcosm, man. 
Tennyson is the more impressed by that science 
which observes the astronomic and cosmic whole of 
nature, while biology and psychology are anticipated 
by Browning and subjected to his usufruct. 

When the laureate was raised to the peerage — a 
station which he twice declined in middle life — he 



A FIT BESTOWAL. 



423 



gained some attention from the satirists, and his ac- 
ceptance of rank no doubt was honestly bemoaned 
by many sturdy radicals. It is difficult, nevertheless, 
to find any violation of principle or taste in the re- 
ceipt by England's favorite and official poet of such 
an honor, bestowed at the climax of his years and 
fame. Republicans should bear in mind that the 
republic of letters is the only one to which Alfred 
Tennyson owed allegiance ; that he was the " first 
citizen " of an ancient monarchy, which honored let- 
ters by gratefully conferring upon him its high tradi- 
tional award. It would be truckling for an Amer- 
ican, loyal to his own form of government, to receive 
an aristocratic title from some foreign potentate. 
Longfellow, for example, promptly declined an order 
tendered him by the king of Italy. But a sense of 
fitness, and even patriotism, should make it easy for 
an Englishman, faithful to a constitutional monarchy, 
to accept any well-earned dignity under that system. 
In every country it is thought worth while for one 
to be the founder of his family ; and in Great Britain 
no able man could do more for descendants, to whom 
he is not sure of bequeathing his talents, than by 
handing down a class-privilege, even though it con- 
fers no additional glory upon the original winner. 
Extreme British democrats, who openly or covertly 
wish to change the form of government, and even 
communists, are aware that Tennyson does not be- 
long to their ranks. He has been, as I long since 
wrote, a liberal conservative : liberal in humanity and 
progressive thought, strictly conservative in allegiance 
to the national system. As for that, touch but the 
territory, imperil the institutions, of Great Britain, 
and Swinburne himself — the pupil of Landor, Maz- 



Created 
Baron 
Tennyson 
0/ Aid- 
worth, 
Surrey, 
and Far- 
ring ford, 
Freshwa- 
ter, Isle oj 
Wight, 
Jan. 24, 



424 



BROWNING. 



" This 
laurel 
greetier. 



zini, and Hugo — betrays the blood in his veins. 
Tennyson, a liberal of the Maurice group, has been 
cleverly styled by Whitman a " poet of feudalism " ; 
he is a celebrator of the past, of sovereignty and 
knighthood; he is no lost leader, "just for a ribbon " 
leaving some gallant cause forsworn or any song un- 
sung. In all fairness, his acceptance of rank savors 
less of inconsistency than does the logic of those who 
rail at the world for neglect of genius, and then up- 
braid them both for coming to an understanding. 

As a final word about Lord Tennyson, a laureate 
of thirty-seven years' service, it may be said that no 
predecessor has filled his office with fewer lapses 
from the quality of a poet. Southey's patriotic rub- 
bish was no better, and not much worse, than his 
verse at large. Wordsworth, during the few years of 
his incumbency, wrote little official verse. Tennyson 
has freshened the greenness of the laurel ; a vivid 
series of national odes and ballads is the result of 
his journey as its wearer. That some of his perfunc- 
tory salutations and pasans have been failures, not- 
ably the Jubilee ode of the current year, is evidence 
that genius does not always obey orders. The Wel- 
lington ode, " The Charge of the Light Brigade," the 
dedications of " In Memoriam " and the " Idyls," and 
such noble ballads as those of " Grenville," " The 
Revenge," " Lucknow " — these are his vouchers for 
the wreath, and, whether inspired by it or not, are 
henceforth a secure portion of his country's song. 



Browning. 
Cp. Chap. 
IX. 



II. 

Old lovers of Tennyson feel that he is best un- 
derstood by those who grew up with his poems, and 



THE INN ALBUM." 



425 



profited by his advance to the mature art and power 
of " In Memoriam " and the four chief " Idyls." 
Browning began and continued in quite another way. 
A neophyte might as well get hold of his middle- 
life work, and thence read backward and forward. 
If one prefers to gain an introduction to the author 
of The Inn Album from a sustained poem, rather than 
from his lyrics, nothing better could be chosen than 
that nervous, coherent work, the first in date of his 
productions during the time we are considering. 1 re- 
call its effect upon one or two of my younger friends, 
who ascribe to it their first sense of those profound 
emotions which set the spirit free. Seldom is there 
a work more inwrought with characterization, fateful 
gathering, intense human passion, tragic action to 
which the realistic scene and manners serve as height- 
ening foils, than this thrilling epic of men and women 
whose destinies are compressed within a single day. 
The tragedy ends with the death of two sinners, whose 
souls are first laid bare. No one of Browning's works 
is better proportioned, or less sophisticated in dic- 
tion, — the latter, in truth, being never suffered to 
divert attention from the movement and interest of 
this electric novel in verse. It was quickly followed by 
a various little book, Pacchiarotto. The poet now turns 
upon his critics, with countering satire and a defense 
of his hardy methods ; but he welcomes, in title-piece 
and epilogue, " friends who are sound " to his Thirty- 
Four Port, promising " nettlebroth " galore to the 
feeble and maudlin. Of the shorter efforts, " A For- 
giveness " displays to the full his dramatic and psy- 
chological mastery. Its verse is modeled with the 
strong right hand that painted " My Last Duchess," to 
which it is in all respects a vigorous companion- 
piece. 



" The Inn 

Album" 
1875. 



" Pacchia- 
rotto, and 
How He 
worked in 
Distem- 
per" 1876 



426 



DRA MA TIC ID YLS. 



Agamem- 
non of 
sfcschylus, 
1877. 



" La Sai- 
sz'az," etc., 
1878. 



" Dramat- 
ic Idyls'''' : 
\st Series, 
1879. 2d 
Series, 



A third translation from the Greek drama, the Aga- 
memnon of ^Eschylus, is marked by fidelity to the text, 
gained through a free disregard of English idiom, 
but scarcely has the sweetness and grace of " Balaus- 
tion " and " Aristophanes' Apology." 

The volume entitled La Saisiaz : The Two Poets 
of Croisic, like "The Inn Album," commends itself 
to lay readers, being direct and forcible, with abun- 
dant food for thought. The opening poem, in the 
" Locksley Hall " measure, bravely considers the 
problem of mortal and immortal life. Its successor 
reeks with humorous wisdom, irony, knowledge of 
the world. An ideal lyric supplements them, in- 
scribed to the woman whose aid to the writer's song 
is symbolized by the cricket's note that helped out 
a minstrel's tune when his lyre had broken a string. 
But the finest and richest display of Browning's 
triune lyrical, narrative, and analytical vigor, which 
he has given us since the memorable " Dramatic 
Lyrics " and " Men and Women," is found in the 
series of Dramatic Idyls. These silence critical com- 
plaint of the neglect or dilution of Browning's orig- 
inal genius. The most impressive of the metrical 
tales are "Martin Ralph," " Clive " — a marvelous 
evocation, and " Ned Bratts " — a Holbeinish con- 
jecture of the effect on a dull brutish hind of Bun- 
yan's teachings. " Pheidippides," a figure of the 
Athenian runner with news from Marathon, is superb, 

and " Doctor " quite unapproachable for jest and 

satire. The story of " Muyleykeh " and his Arab steed 
is already a classic. Always throughout these vivid 
impersonations, as in " Ivan Ivanovitch " and " Pietro 
of Albano," the magician's supreme intent is to 
reveal 



BROWNING'S RECENT WORKS. 



427 



* What 's under lock and key — 
Man's soul ! " 

Jocoseria, made up of brief and sturdy poems, illus- 
trates again the author's habit of exploration through 
all literatures for his texts and themes. After the 
grim, pathetic ballad of " Donald " and the grimmer 
" Christina and Monaldeschi," we have in " Jochan- 
nan Hakkadosh " the vital lessons of the book. 
The Rabbi and the pupils, who find his sayings hard 
indeed, are no inapt types of our modern poet and 
his circle. As in "Paracelsus," Browning's favorite 
theorem continues to be the soul's real victory 
achieved in the apparent failures of earthly life. 
His latter years are given more and more to the 
consideration of eternal rather than temporal ques- 
tions. Under the guise of a Dervish he proffers, 
in Ferishtah's Fcmcies, a sum of hopeful wisdom as 
to the meaning of existence, the goodness of the 
Creator. The thought, like all great thought, is sim- 
ple, yet put so subtle-wise as to make it well that 
our latter-day Solomon has the fame that tempts a 
world to study the riddling homilies of his old age. 
To those who balk thereat no comfort is vouchsafed 
except such as they find in " Pambo " of the preced- 
ing volume, — for he still merrily "offends with his 
tongue," though clearly an interpreter of the purest 
theistic spirit of our time. My brief references to 
Browning's plenteous aftermath close with his Par- 
leyings with Certain People of Importance in Their 
Day. His intellect disports itself more than ever in 
these half dozen citations of far-away personages 
whom he raises from the dead at will. The work is 
capricious enough, but he does not forget, in the 
most rugged and obscure passages, to give us inter- 



" Jocose- 
ria," 1883. 



" Ferisk- 
taKs Fan- 
cies,'' 1 1884. 



"Parley- 

ings" etc. n 



428 



BROWNINGS RHYMED VERSE. 



ludes that prove his voice still unimpaired. " Gerard 
de Lareise " is smooth and delicate enough for a 
fastidious ear, with rare bits of song included, and 
music itself receives expert attention in " Charles 
Avison." The prologue and epilogue of this book 
are not its least essential matters. All in all, how- 
ever, it is not so ultimate and satisfactory as one 
could desire. At whatever worth he may rate the 
clubs of quidnuncs associated to study him, he does 
not disdain to make riddles for them, as in the Pre- 
lude, and to choose remote, obscure topics for their 
discussion — somewhat as the wizard Michael Scott, 
compelled to supply tasks for his familiar, succeeded 
at last by ordering him to make ropes out of sea- 
sand. He is right in affording them no special 
clews, for that which, written in verse, can be con- 
veyed as well by a paraphrase certainly is not po- 
etry. 

Most of the foregoing work, so varied and af- 
fluent, is in rhymed verse. Great respect is paid to 
the observance of the rhyme, even though meaning 
and measure halt for it. Whitman's Hebraic chant, 
often vibrating with rhythmical harmony, is the out- 
come of a belief that rhymes are hackneyed and 
trivial ; and as Browning's rhymes are not seldom 
forced and artificial to a degree reached by no other 
master, the question is asked why he should rhyme 
at all, why he does not confine himself to his typi- 
cal blank-verse and other free-hand measures. 

To this it might be replied that he was born a 
poet, with the English lyrical ear and accentual in- 
stinct ; that he rhymes by nature, and exquisitely, as 
we see from all his simpler melodies, and that he is 
not the man to slight an intuitive note of expres- 



Brown- 
trig's use of 
rhyme : 



— Its cause 
and effect. 



HIS TRAITS OF STYLE. 



429 



sion. With all his headlong tyranny over restraints 
of form, an adherence to rhyme, as in the case of 
Swinburne, is " a brake upon his speech " ; other- 
wise his fluency, although the result of endlessly 
changeful thought, would quite outleap the effective 
limits of art. That the brakes creak and groan is a 
proof they are doing their work. But what of his 
involved and parenthetical style ? A rule concerning 
language is that it has power to formulate not only 
problems of absolute geometry, but those of imagi- 
native thought ; and clearness of style has been a 
grace of the first poets and thinkers. When Brown- 
ing's tangled syntax is involuntary, it may denote a 
struggling process of thought, for the style is the 
man. But, in defense of such of these "hard read- 
ings " as seem voluntary and of aforethought, we 
call to mind the oriental feeling that truth is most 
oracular when couched in emblems and deep phrases. 
Nature arms her sweetest kernels with a prickly 
and resistful exterior, so that they are procured by 
toil which gives them worth. This poet surrounds 
his treasures with labyrinths and thorn-hedges that 
stimulate the reader's onset. The habit is defensi- 
ble when the treasures are so genuine. To experts 
and thinkers, who do not need a lure to make them 
value the quest, such things are an irritation and 
open to the disfavor shown by many who yield to 
none in respect for Browning's creative power. 

Yet it is plain that both the style and matter of 
his work, after years of self-respecting adherence to 
his own ways, have at last given occasion for the 
most royal warrant of fame and appreciation ever 
granted to poet or sage while still in the flesh. To 
be sure there never was a time when such a result 



A 7t apothe" 
osis. 



430 



THE INVASION OF ARCADY. 



Poets and 
Pedants. 



The 

Browning 

Societies. 



could more reasonably be expected. Our period ex- 
ceeds all others, even the Alexandrian, in literary 
bustle and research. What organized phalanxes for 
the study and annotation of our classics, — of course, 
and as is fitting, with the Shakespeare societies at 
their head ! How rude the capture of Shelley, the 
avatar of our ideality and lyrical feeling ! Old and 
young, even the " little hordes " of Fourier's social- 
istic dream, divide the ethereal raiment of the poet's 
poet, that each may bear away some shred of its 
gossamer. Shelley's lifelong and reverent lovers, who 
yield themselves silently to the imponderable, divine 
beauty of his numbers, and who would as soon make 
an autopsy of Lycidas himself as to approach his 
verse with hook and scalpel, look with equal wonder 
at the tribes which now claim their poet as if by 
right of discovery and the select few who burden 
his music with their notes and scholia. To its 
transformation into a " cult " they apply the stric- 
ture of a famous preacher who was concerned at 
the multiplication of cheap Bibles. The evangelical 
bodies, he declared, by placing Holy Writ in every 
lobby and corridor, have dispelled the sacred awe in 
which it was held, and in fact have made it " as 
common as a pack of cards." Feeling, taste, in- 
stinct, — all are against making a text-book of Shel- 
ley's poetry, almost the last reliquary guarded, with 
some right of distant kinship, by those who claim a 
humble inheritance of song. The sudden uprising 
of many Browning clubs is the latest symptom of the 
rage for elucidation. The like of it has not been 
witnessed since the days of the neo-Platonists and 
grammarians ; nor were there a thousand printing- 
presses at the command of the Alexandrian scholi- 



BROWNING SOCIETIES. 



431 



asts. Not only more than one University quadran- 
gle, but every mercantile town, from London where 
the poet dwells to the farthest outpost of the west- 
ern continent, has its central Browning Society, from 
which dependants radiate like the little spiders that 
spin their tiny strands near the maternal web. Em- 
erson was a seer ; Browning is a virile poet and 
scholar ; but it has been the same with the follow- 
ers of both — a Browning student of the first order 
can do much for us, — while one of the third or fourth 
remove, whose degree is expressed algebraically as 



B n or /IB, may be and often is as prosaic a claim- 
ant to special illumination as one is apt to meet. 
The " study " of Browning takes strong hold upon 
theorists, analysts, didacticians, who care little for 
poetry in itself, and who, like Chinese artists, pay 
more respect to the facial dimensions of his Muse 
than to her essential beauty and the divine light of 
her eyes. The master himself may well view with 
distrust certain phases of a movement originating 
with his more-favored disciples ; nor is poetry that 
requires annotation in its own time surer, on that 
account, of supremacy in the future. Perhaps the 
best that can be said of this matter is that some- 
thing out of the common is needed to direct atten- 
tion to a great original genius, and to secure for a 
poet, after his long experience of neglect, some prac- 
tical return for the fruits of his imagination. 

A contrast between the objective, or classical, 
dramatic mode and that of Browning is not deroga- 
tory to the resources of either. In the former, the 
author's thinking is done outside of the work; the 
work itself, the product of thought, stands as a cre- 



Dramatic 
psychology 



432 



DRAMATIC INTROSPECTION. 



ation, with the details of its moulding unexplained. 
The other exhibits the play of the constructor's 
thought. The result, as aflecting the imagination, 
justifies the conventional aim — to make us see, as 
in real life, the outside of persons and events, con- 
cerning ourselves rather with actual speech and 
movement than with a search for hidden influences, 
esoteric laws. To read one of Browning's psychical 
analyses is like consulting a watch that has a trans- 
parent glass, instead of a cap of gold, surmounting 
the interior. We forget the beauty and proportions 
of the jeweled timepiece, even its office as a chron- 
icler of time, and are absorbed by the intricate and 
dexterous, rather than artistic, display of the works 
within. Here is movement, here is curious and ex- 
act machinery — here is the very soul of the thing, 
no doubt ; but a watch of the kind that marks the 
time as if by some will and guerdon of its own is 
even more suggestive and often as satisfying to its 
possessor. All the more, Browning represents the 
introspective science of the new age. Regard one 
of his men or women : you detect not only the 
striking figure, the impassioned human speech and 
conduct, but as if from some electric coil so intense 
a light is shot beyond that every organ and integu- 
ment are revealed. You see the blood in its secret- 
est channels, the convolutions and gyrations of the 
molecular braia, all the mechanism that obeys the 
impulse of the resultant personage. Attention is di- 
verted from the entire creation to the functions of 
its parts. Events become of import chiefly for the 
currents which promote them, or which they initiate. 
Browning's genius has made this under-world a trib- 
utary of its domain. As a mind-reader, then, he is 



TENNYSON, BROWNING, — THEIR PERIOD. 



433 



the most dramatic of poets. The fact that, after 
scrutinizing his personages, he translates the thoughts 
of all into his own tongue, may lessen their objec- 
tive value, but those wonted to the language find 
nothing better suited to their taste. 

His judicial acceptance of things as they are is 
largely a matter of temperament, and does not imply 
that he is more devout and theistic, or a sounder op- 
timist, than his chief compeer. The broadening ef- 
fect of experience as a man of the world also has 
much to do with it. Both Tennyson and Browning 
are highly intellectual. The former's instinct for art 
and beauty is supreme, and mental analytics yield to 
them in his work. To Browning poetic effects, of 
which he has proved himself a master, often are noth- 
ing but impedimenta, to be discarded when fairly in 
pursuit of psychological discovery. 

A conclusion with respect to Tennyson, in my re- 
view of his career from a much earlier point of time, 
was that he would be regarded long hereafter as, 
" all in all, the fullest representative " of the " refined 
and complex Victorian age." To this I added that 
he had carried his idyllic mode " to such perfection 
that its cycle seems already near an end" and "a 
new generation is calling for work of a different 
order, for more vital passion and dramatic force." 
After many years, he still seems to me the exponent 
of the typical Victorian period — that in which the 
sentiment poetized in the " Idyls " and " In Memo- 
riam" was at its height. It is equally true that 
Browning was in reserve as the leader-elect of the 
present succeeding time. The Queen is still on her 
throne, but her reign outlasts the schools to which 
her name belongs. New movements are initiated, and 



Tennyson 

and 

Browning. 



Their dif- 
fering re- 
lations to 
the Period. 



434 



SWINBURNE. 



Swin- 
burne. Cp. 
Chat. XI. 



" Erecth- 
eus,^ 1876 



Rece7it lyr- 
ical vol- 



" Poems 
and Bal- 
7 ads," 2d 
Series, 



Browning is their interpreter so far as poetic insight 
is concerned. To this we only have to add that he 
is an eminent example of the justice of our excep- 
tion to Taine's dogma of the invariable subjection 
of an artist to his accidental conditions. He has 
proved that his genius is of the kind that creates its 
own environment and makes for itself a new atmos- 
phere, whether of heaven or of earth. 

III. 

Swinburne also has been a leader, particularly on 
the side of form and expression, and through his 
brilliant command of effects which novices are just 
as sure to copy as young musicians are to adopt the 
" methods " of a Chopin or a Liszt. Obvious ten- 
dencies of the new school reveal the influence of 
Browning, modified structurally by Swinburne's lyrical 
abandonment and feats of diction and rhythm. 

As he reaches middle life, the volume of his pro- 
ductions becomes remarkable, putting to confusion 
those who doubted his vitality and staying - power. 
His second classical drama, Erectkeus, is severely an- 
tique in mould, with strong text and choruses. But it 
is relatively frigid, apart from common interest, and 
lacks something of the fire and melody of " Atalanta." 
The author's compulsive lyrical faculty, however, has 
not ceased its exercise — the resulting odes, songs, 
and manifold brief poems having been collected chiefly 
in the second series of Poems and Ballads and in 
"Songs of the Springtides," "Studies in Song," "A 
Century of Roundels," and " A Midsummer Holiday." 
Their variety and splendor sustain the minstrel's early 
promise ; — any one of the collections would make a 



HIS NEW LYRICAL VOLUMES. 



435 



reputation. If they have been greeted with less than 
our old wonder and relish, it is due to the unforgetable 
novelty of those first impressions, and to the profusion 
of this poet's exhaustless outgiving. Masterpieces of 
their kind among the new songs and ballads are the 
" Ave atque Vale," of which I wrote in a former es- 
say, and " A Forsaken Garden." The translations 
from Villon charm the ear with a witching sense 
possibly unfelt by the vagabond balladist's contem- 
poraries. Swinburne is still at the head of British 
elegiac and memorial poets. Witness the twin odes 
in honor of Landor and Hugo, covering the entire 
progress of their achievements, and the second ode 
to Hugo, the lines to Mazzini, and other composi- 
tions in the highest mood of tributary song. A per- 
vasive element of these books is that relating to the 
sea, of which their author is a familiar and votary. 
One of them (as also the poem " By the North Sea") 
is inscribed to his " best friend, Theodore Watts," 
the poet and critic to whom Mr. Swinburne is in- 
debted for loyal companionship and devotion. The 
Songs of the Springtides are surcharged with end- 
less harmony of ocean winds and surges. " Thalas- 
sius," "On the Cliffs," "The Garden of Cymodoce," 
full of alliterative and billowy cadence, are fashioned 
in a classical and nobly swelling mould. The unique 
poem of Sappho, " On the Cliffs," was suggested by 
the fancy that the nightingales still repeat fragments 
of her Lesbian song. A Midsummer Holiday takes 
us again by the sea and through the 'longshore lanes 
of England ; its refrain — " Our father Chaucer, here 
we praise thy name " — recalls the enduring fresh- 
ness of a poet to whom still the avowal can be made 
that 



" Studies 
in Song," 
1880. 



" Songs of 
the Spring- 
tides," 
1880. 



" A Mid- 
summer 
Holiday, ' 
1884. 



436 



SWINBURNE'S COMPLETED TRILOGY. 



" A Cen- 
tury of 
Roundels" 
1883. 



" Tristram 
of Lyon- 
^j^, ;, i882. 



New 
Dramas '. 
" Mary 
Stuart," 

1881. 



" Each year that England clothes herself with May- 
She takes thy likeness on her." 

Elaborate and refined as all these pieces are, they 
exhale a purely English atmosphere. A Century of 
Rowidels is the most simple and distinctive of the 
lyrical collections. Among the noteworthy roundels 
are several discoursing with Death, and those on 
Autumn and Winter ; best of all, the clear-cut series 
on " A Baby's Death." In the latter, as in the cradle- 
songs and other notes of infancy and childhood, he 
is winning and tender — in all his poems on age, rev 
erent and eulogistic. The artistic motive of his polit 
ical outbursts, at various crises, is quite subordinate 
to their writer's impulsive views ; their satire and in- 
vective possibly act as safety-valves and are of in- 
terest to curious students of the poetic temperament 
in its extremes. 

Not a few consider Tristram of Lyonesse to be his 
most attractive and ideal narrative poem. The con- 
ception of the Arthurian legend is distinct from that 
of either Tennyson or Arnold, and the verse is rich 
with desire, foreboding, and pathetic beauty. The 
opening phrase, " The Sailing of the Swallow," is en- 
chanting ; the description of Iseult of Ireland is a 
wonder, and the whole coil of burning love and pite- 
ous mischance was never before so marvelously 
woven. 

Of Swinburne's recent dramas, Mary Stuart com- 
pletes the most imposing Trilogy in modern literature, 
and is, while less romantic than " Chastelard " and 
less eloquent than " Bothwell," a fit successor to the 
two. Its vigor is condensed and joined with a grav- 
ity becoming the firm hand of maturer years as it 
depicts the culmination of this historic tragedy — the 



MARINO FALIERO. 



437 



taking-ofT of a picturesque, impassioned, superbly self- 
ish type of royalty and womanhood. The author's 
consistent ideal of Mary Stuart is formed by intui- 
tion and critical study, and is reasonably set forth in 
his prose essay. The future will accept his concep- 
tion as justly interpreting the secret of her career. 
In the Trilogy her fate, through the agency of Mary 
Beaton, is made the predestined outcome of early and 
heartless misdeeds, and dramatically ends the steady 
process of the work. 

Marino Faliero, postdating by sixty-five years By- 
ron's drama of that name, following the same chron- 
icle and with the same personages, is a direct chal- 
lenge to comparison. Both are fairly representative 
of their authors. Neither is a stage-play: Byron's 
was tested against his own judgment, and he found 
no fault with the critics who thought his genius un- 
dramatic. There is no talk of love in either play, 
except the innocent passion which Swinburne creates 
between Bertuccio and the Duchess. Both poets make 
the Doge's part o'ertop all others, but Byron light- 
ens Faliero's monologues with stage business, etc., 
and pays serious attention to the action of the piece. 
Swinburne uses the higher poetic strain throughout ; 
his language is heroic, the verse and diction are al- 
ways imposing, but proportion, background, and the 
question of relative values obtain too little of his at- 
tention. All know the slovenly and unstudied char- 
acter of Byron's blank-verse. Swinburne adheres to 
the type, equally finished and prodigal, to which he 
has wonted us. In every sense he is a better work- 
man. But the directness and simplicity of Byron's 
drama are to be considered. The death-speech which 
he puts in Faliero's mouth, theatrical as it is, will 



" Marino 
Faliero : 
A Trag- 
edy," 1885. 



Contrast- 
ed with 
Byron's 
drama. 



438 



SWINBURNE'S PROSE MISCELLANIES. 



Swin- 
burne's 
laterprose. 



continue memorable as a fine instance of Byronic 
power. In the modern play the Doge's speech ex- 
tends to fifteen pages (with the chanting interludes), 
and this directly after a trial-scene in which he has 
done most of the talking. Half this rhythmical elo- 
quence would be more impressive than the whole. 

In spite of Swinburne's deprecation of Lord By- 
ron, and his own more direct inheritance from Shel- 
ley, he has several of the former's traits : the scorn 
of dullness and commonplace, faith in his own con- 
clusions, and the swift and bold mastery of a forci- 
ble theme. Continuing the habit of prose-writing, as 
is the custom of the times, he has displayed his 
scholarship and versatility in new critical essays. 
The value of some of these — such, for example, as 
the prose dithyrambic on Hugo — lies not so much 
in their judicial quality as in those felicitous critical 
epigrams which take the reader by their sudden in- 
sight and originality. " A Note on Charlotte Bronte " 
is admirable in this way, for all its tendency to ex- 
tremes. The volume of Miscellanies contains, on 
the whole, his soundest and most varied prose-writ- 
ing, much of it as well considered as one could de- 
sire, and expressing, brilliantly of course, the judg- 
ment of a poetic scholar in his dispassionate mood. 
It is interesting to see how easily and royally Mr. 
Swinburne keeps up his domination over an active 
class of writers. His scholarship, indisputable talent^ 
and Napoleonic method of judgment and warfare 
render him a kind of autocrat whom few of his 
craft care to encounter openly, though specialists in 
matters of research and criticism occasionally ven- 
ture on rebellion. Whatever ground he loses is lost 
in consequence of a law already pointed out, which 



" Victor 
Hugo," 



" Char- 
lotte 

Bronte," 
1877. 

" Miscel- 
lanies," 



STILLED VOICES. 



439 



operates in the case of a vein too rich and produc- 
tive. The torrent of his rhythm, beautiful and imag- 
inative as it is, satiates the public — even animals 
fed on too nutritious food will turn to bran and 
husks for a relief. And the workings of his genius, 
from its very force and individuality, are such as he 
cannot be expected to vary or suspend. 



IV. 

Death has summoned with his impartial touch 
young and old alike from the cycle of poets consid- 
ered in our original review. None was more de- 
plored than Rossetti, the child of astral light, founder 
of a conjoint school of art and minstrelsy, — the 
most unworldly and nervously exalted of modern 
poets. No one has made a more definite, though 
specific and limited, impression in his time. His 
work was pursued for its own sake, yet the expres- 
sion of as rare a personality as the fire of Italy and 
training of England could develop. A collection of 
his lyrics, piously made by fitting hands, and the 
critical mementos by Sharp and Hall Caine, render 
it needful for me to add but little more. Among 
the rhymes not in former collections, the finely wrought 
mediaeval poem of " Rose-Mary " and the strong bal- 
lad of " The King's Tragedy " are prominent. There 
are also a few characteristic minor songs and lyrics, 
and at last the full series of quatorzains comprising 
The House of Life, — that wondrous rosary of impas- 
sioned sonnets of life, love, and death, — so distinct 
from Mrs. Browning's yet henceforth to be named 
with hers as no less inspired and memorable. An- 
other poetic soul, that of the old minstrel Home, 



Stilled 
Voices. 



Rossetti, 
d. 1882. 



Home, 
d. 1884. 



440 



BREAK THE STRING 



O'Shaugh- 
nessy, 
d. !88i. 



P. B. 

Marston, 
d. 1887. 



Lord 

Houghton, 
etc. See 
Chapters 
VII., 
VIII. 

Robert 

Stephen 
Hawker : 
1803-75. 

Menella 

Bute 

S medley : 

1825-75. 



has passed away in its due season of years, and 
therewith a bold and various dramatic bard, typically 
English in his restless, independent nature. Laura 
Dibaho, a fruit of his ripe old age, though not so 
equable and compact a work as " Cosmo de' Medici," 
is a tragedy befitting the hand of a friend of Landor 
and Browning. Arthur O'Shaughnessy was cut off 
in the midst of an active but scarcely brightening ca- 
reer. Songs of a Worker, the posthumous volume of 
this young member of the Neo-Romantic group, 
shows him in his graver and more humane moods, 
but contains little better than the striking transla- 
tions from modern French poets with whom he was 
thoroughly in rapport. Appreciative tributes to his 
late brother-in-law are still appearing. Philip Mars- 
ton's life and early death were very pathetic. There 
is a touching sincerity in his poems, and their finish, 
considering his blindness, was noteworthy from the 
first. He had a sensitive and vibratory but coura- 
geous nature. Nor was the life of this suffering 
writer, fostered always by choice and sympathetic as- 
sociates, without its compensations. Depth of feel- 
ing is evident throughout Wind- Voices, his last vol- 
ume. He wrote of it in one of his letters : "I can 
at least say of these poems that they have come from 
the heart." Among others who have joined the silent 
majority, and whose later works call for no fresh re- 
marks, are Lord Houghton, George Eliot, Turner, 
FitzGerald, Thornbury, Calverley, and the Dorsetshire 
idyllist, William Barnes. Hawker, the sturdy Vicar 
of Morwenstow, left the record of a unique character, 
a few vigorous ballads, and the " Song of the West- 
ern Men." Miss Smedley was a delicate, thoughtful 
poet, of the Tennysonian school, whose refined lyrics 



FOLD MUSICS WING!" 



441 



were marked by feeling and quiet beauty. A collec- 
tion was recently made for the first time of Laman 
Blanchard's verse. He was the long-ago friend of 
Bulwer, Procter, and Browning, a journalist-poet and 
humorist of the old type, who wrote some good son- 
nets and miscellaneous pieces of variable worth. A 
book of selections, made last year by Percy Cot- 
ton, from the poetical works of the late Mortimer 
Collins, receives its warrant through their merit. 
Collins was a genuine poet within his range. "A 
Greek Idyll," written years ago, is second only to 
Dobson's " Autonoe." " The Ivory Gate " has cap- 
tivating original melody, — a lyric that poets learn 
by heart. One remembers kindly the natural and 
even careless singers, such as Collins, who utter their 
song without pretence or affectation, having sweet 
voices, and because they can thus express fleeting 
and spontaneous moods, and in no other way. 

The reproduction, after half a century and in the 
author's old age, of Wells's Joseph and his Brethren, 
was a new example of the fact that both gods and 
men conspire to preserve a work of genius. Rossetti 
and Morley among others took part in this ante- 
mortem recognition of a poet neglected by his own 
generation, who certainly had no ground for Cato's 
protest against the arbitrament of the people of a time 
different from that in which one has lived. His 
poem, heralded by Swinburne's introduction with tem- 
pered praise, — though long, diffuse, with various 
prosaic interludes, and curiously revealing Wells's ab- 
solute lack of the sense of humor, — is still an im- 
posing and dramatic narration, lavish with color and 
notable for an old-English quality of diction and 
verse. Its author had drunk so impartially at the 



Laman 
Blanch- 
ard: 
1804-45. 



Mortimer 

Collins' 

1827-76. 



Charles 
Jeremiah 
Wells : 
1800-79. 



A restored 
master- 
piece. 



442 



M. ARNOLD. — W. MORRIS. 



springs of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Milton, that it 
wants evenness of tone. But it was well worth re- 
viving, and has excited enthusiasm even in this age 
of research and discovery. 



V. 

The new poems of several authors discussed in the 
body of this work introduce few notes that suggest 
much comment or a reversal of early opinion. Pro- 
fessor Arnold has given us too little verse of late, 
but his authority as a critic of modern tendencies 
has steadily widened. Traversing my first notice of 
him, and as in the case of Browning, I think it right 
to set down a few qualifications. I feel that the re- 
gret and unrest which pervade some of his lyrical 
verse, and which I thought opposed to the healthy 
impulses of song, were in their own way as truly the 
expression of Youth as the romanticism of Childe 
Harold or Locksley Hall. That Arnold was the rep- 
resentative in his poetry, as he has been a leader 
through his prose, of the questioning progress of the 
day — of a day whose perturbation of itself declares 
a forward-looking spirit — is now more plain to me. 
Like Emerson in America, he was a teacher and 
stimulator of many now conspicuous in fields of men- 
tal activity. A tribute is due, no less, to his most 
ideal trait, — the subtilty with which he responds to, 
and almost expresses, the inexpressible — the haunt- 
ing suggestions, the yearnings, of man and nature — 
the notes of starlight and shadow, the evasive mys- 
tery of what we are and "all that we behold." 

The most objective of these poets, William Morris, 
to whom I applied Hawthorne's phrase — the Artist 



Notes on 
surviving 
poets of 
the origi- 
nal list. 

Matthew 
A mold. 



Some 
after- 
thoughts. 



William 
Morris. 



MISS ROSSETTI. — MRS. WEBSTER. 



443 



of the Beautiful, now devotes himself rather zealously 
to the work of social reform, as if content no longer 
to be "the idle singer of an empty day." Yet his 
rapid production of verse has scarcely lagged. A 
translation of the Aeneids of Virgil, in the sounding 
measure of Chapman's " Iliads," while not verbally 
archaic, does not fully translate — in the sense of 
making modern — an epic that was thoroughly mod- 
ern in its own time. Morris, with his prodigious 
facility, has completed a similar version of the Iliads, 
now just published. The Story of Sigurd the Volsung 
is perhaps his chief sustained work : a timely epic 
in this reign of Wagner, built up from the German 
Lied and surely with imposing effect : 

" There was a dwelling of Kings, ere the world was waxen old ; 
Dukes were the door-wards there, and the roofs were thatched 
with gold." 

A wonderful achievement, to fashion this monumental 
work, after re-creating for us the classical and mediae- 
val tales of Southern Europe and the Sagas of the 
icy North. Of women poets, Miss Rossetti still finds 
none beside her on the heights of spiritual vision. 
The fanciful Masque of the Months, in A Pageant 
and Other Poems, strengthens belief that her genius is 
less visible through such constructions than in brief, 
impassioned lyrics, — stanzas like " Passing and 
Glassing," — and her sonnets, of which the series 
entitled " Later Life " is a complement to that on 
Love in an early volume. Of Mrs. Webster's new 
dramas Tn a Day, a terse Greek tragedy, is the 
most effective. The lyrics and pastoral romance of 
Disguises are its best features. A Book of Rhyme adds 
to the impression that, with all her uncommon gifts, 
she is too versatile and facile; most of her poetry 



Miss 
Rossetti. 



Mrs. 
Webster, 



444 



MISS INGELOW. — ALLINGHAM, ETC 



Miss 
Ingelow. 



Ailing- 
ham. 



Rickard 
Garnett : 
1835- 

De Vere. 



Palgrave. 



Hake. 



is good, but she has yet to write -a poem or drama 
of the highest class. Jean Ingelow's Poems of the 
Old Days and the New, 2, little graver than those of 
her springtime, still have many skylark notes. Her 
ambitious pieces, with the exception of " The World- 
Martyr," owe their chief value to the songs which 
they include. It is pleasant to find a general collec- 
tion of Songs, Ballads and Stories, by Allingham, an- 
other natural singer. He justly says that " these lit- 
tle songs, found here and there," are not the product 
of the goose-wing or inkstand ; — 

" — they came without search, — 
Were found as by chance." 

Many will long retain their liking for the modest 
poet of " The Fairies " and " Lovely Mary Donnelly." 
Some genuine harbor-ballads, in a conjuring legen- 
dary vein, have been written by Dr. Garnett, whose 
earlier work should have been noted in my original 
text. Among the Wordsworthians, Aubrey de Vere 
is the busiest survivor. His Legends of the Saxon 
Saints and Foray of Queen Meave exhibit no change 
of characteristics. A diffuse closet-drama, St. Thomas 
of Canterbury, written from the church point of view, 
did not preclude Tennyson from entering the same 
field. Palgrave's Visions of England transcribes many 
of the Gesta Romanorum in a great variety of 
forms. " England Once More," at the close, is a 
vigorous strain. It is odd at this late day to find a 
critic, who compiled the Golden Treasury, burdening 
his own poetry with notes, and in a long, collegiate 
preface defending very simple forms of English 
metre. Dr. Hake's Legends of the Morrow and 
Maiden Ecstasy show him as the same quaint with- 
drawn maker of symbolic verse ; a little more vari- 



IV A RREN. — PA YNE. — DOMETT, ETC. 



445 



ous than of old, yet scarcely to be read at a stretch. 
In a stray poem of his, " Farewell to Nature," the 
" pathetic fallacy " of the soliloquists receives the 
best treatment which any writer has given it. 

In these days it is probably a mistake to compose 
a tragedy upon the scale of The Soldier of Fortune 
(1876), by J. Leicester Warren, the author of " Phi- 
loctetes." In length it approaches " Bothwell," and 
Warren certainly betrays an admiration of Swin- 
burne's verse. But this drama is written throughout 
with care and vigor, and often with high eloquence, 
and the lover of true poetry will find much to re- 
ward him in its scenes. Pygmalion and Silenus, by 
Woolner, have no more absolute poetic motive than 
his early pieces : cold as the marble of his sculpture, 
they would be didactic but for the nature of their 
themes. John Payne, at the date of his last collec- 
tion, was still a Neo-Romantic extremist. Neither 
in the powerful and uncanny Zautrec, nor in his New 
Poems, is there any more trace of realism or mod- 
ernness than appears in old tapestry or a vellum 
book of lays. He is a lyrical Ruskin as concerns 
latter-day innovations. His scholarship and gift for 
translation into English verse and prose have been 
memorably utilized for his renderings of Villon, The 
Thousand Nights and One Night, etc. My early 
remarks on Domett apply to the well-named collec- 
tion of his Flotsam and jfetsam, which includes " A 
Christmas Hymn, New Style," and " Cripplegate " — 
a poem concerning Milton. Robert Buchanan also 
has made no new departure. His volume of 1882 
confirms our respect for him as a balladist, and he 
has done few better things than " The Lights of 
Leith." Of late he has been scornful of the Muse 



Warren. 
Cp.p. 283. 



Woolner. 



Payne. 



Domett. 



Buchanan. 



44<5 



SCOTT. — PA TMORE. — F. MYERS. — NOEL. 



Marked 
advances. 



Scott. 



Patmore. 



F. Myers. 



Noel. 



and her Arcadian haunts and minstrels, but has ex- 
tended with success his efforts as a playwright, — for 
which a melodramatic tendency, that does not im- 
prove his novels, has given him undoubted qualifica- 
tions. 

Definite advances have been scored, however, by 
a few of these our old acquaintances. A Poet's Har- 
vest Home, by the veteran artist Bell Scott, is a 
century of precious gems in verse, not one of which 
is without beauty. The quaintness that would be af- 
fectation in younger men is his by nature, and 
withal a taste and intellect resembling Landor's. It 
is rare that so poetic a little book appears. Coven- 
try Patmore's strain, in the new portions of his 
Florilegium Amantis^ is "of a higher mood " than 
his early realism of the grass-plot and drawing-room. 
The odes first published as " The Unknown Eros," 
in irregular but stately measures, have a fine re- 
served power — visible also in the striking apostro- 
phes to England. His poem to " My Little Son " is 
exquisitely touching. The Renewal of Youth, by 
Frederick Myers, bears out the promise of his early 
prime. He is of the school that regards song as a 
means of expression, and depends on thought and 
feeling to animate the simplest forms. The " Stan- 
zas on Mr. Watts's Collected Works " are akin to 
Parsons's lines on Dante — high praise indeed ; and 
there is a nobility of tone even in his meditative 
pieces which reveals an unusual character. Roden 
Noel is another of whom good words may be hon- 
estly said — not so much for his more labored vol- 
umes, The Red Flag, and The House of Ravensburg — 
a semi-drama ; but the utterances found in A Little 
Child's Monument spring from the inmost depths of 



MEREDITH.— PROLIFIC NEW WRITERS. 



447 



a poet's heart, whose impulsive feeling always must 
constitute its strongest appeal. The most suggestive 
verse latterly put forth by writers named in this section 
is that of Meredith, whose touch never yet lacked 
individuality. He is another of those novelists, such 
as Kingsley and Thackeray, quite at home on the 
poet's own ground. His lyrics Of the Joy of Earth 
(to which a complemental series is announced) have 
a purpose that reveals itself to one willing to ponder 
on their often involved, always thought-hoarding lines. 



He is, with a difference, the Emerson of 



English 



poets : " The Woods of 'Westermain " and " The 
Lark Ascending " are in veritable harmony with our 
Concord " Woodnotes." Meredith's talent for melody 
and structure is sufficient. Even his sonnets are 
welcome, and whether aptly or carelessly put to- 
gether ; for in each there is some deep or majestic 
thought, while in fluent measures he runs too much 
at large. " Lucifer in Starlight " and " The Spirit of 
Shakespeare " add to our list of important sonnets, 
and come from one who, in his own phrase, has 
"never stood at Fortune's beck." 



VI. 

Of the poets whose books have appeared mainly 
since the date of our earlier review, a few are con- 
spicuous for the extent of their work, and demand 
attention in any notice of the time. What are their 
respective claims to the favor awarded leaders whom 
.hey rival in productiveness ? 

Symonds is fairly typical of the best results of the 
English university training. He is an exemplar of 
taste ; this, and liberal culture, joined with fine per- 



George 

Meredith, 



Prolific 
writers. 



John 

A ddington 
Symonds ■ 



448 



SYMONDS. 



A n exem- 
plar of 
Taste. 



His 

poetical 
works. 



ceptive faculties, endow a writer who has the respect 
of lovers of the beautiful for his service as a guide 
to its history and masterpieces. A wealth of lan- 
guage and material sustains his prose explorations in 
the renaissance, his Grecian and Italian sketches, his 
charming discourse of the Greek poets and of the 
Italian and other literatures. He has given us com 
plete and almost ideal translations of the sonnets 
of Angelo and Campanella. Coming to his original 
verse, we again see what taste and sympathy can do 
for a receptive nature ; all, in fact, that they can do 
toward the making of a poet born, not with genius, 
but with a facile and persistent bent for art. The 
division between friendship and love is no more ab- 
solute, as not of degree but of kind, than that between 
the connoisseur and the most careless but impassioned 
poet. Symonds recognizes this in a thoroughbred pref- 
ace to Mci7ty Moods, a book covering the verses of 
fifteen years. He proffers attractive work, good hand- 
ling of the slow metres, and an Italian modification 
of the antique feeling. There is some lyrical quality 
in his " Spring Songs." Almost the same remarks 
apply to a later volume, New and Old. Its atmos- 
phere, landscape, and notes of sympathy therewith 
are so unEnglish that one must possess the author's 
latinesque training to feel them adequately. We have 
sequences of polished sonnets in the Animi Figura 
and its interpreter, Vagabundi Libellus. These studies 
of a "beauty-loving and impulsive, but at the same 
time self-tormenting and conscientious mind " are his 
most satisfactory efforts in verse ; but if their emo- 
tions are, as he avows, " imagined," he reasons too 
curiously for a poet. " Stella " has a right to com- 
plain of his hero, and it is no wonder she went mad. 



EDWIN ARNOLD. 



449 



His poems are suggestive to careful students only, in 
spite of their exquisite word-painting and the merit 
of sonnets like those on " The Thought of Death." 
Admiring the finish of them all, we try in vain to re- 
call the one abiding piece or stanza. Here is scholar's 
work of the first order, the outcome of knowledge 
and a sense of beauty. Perhaps the author would 
have succeeded as well as a painter, sculptor, or 
architect, for in any direction taste would be his main- 
stay. Nothing can be happier than his rendering, with 
comments, of the mediaeval Latin Students' Songs, 
neatly entitled Wine, Woman and Song ; and in the 
prose " Italian By-ways " his critical touch is so light 
and rare that we are thankful for his companion- 
ship. 

Those who wish to make more than a ripple on 
the stream may profit by the example of Edwin 
Arnold. During the latest quarter of a busy life he 
has gained a respectful hearing in his own country 
and something like fame in America. He is not a 
creative poet, yet the success of his Asiatic legends 
is due to more than an attractive dressing-up of the 
commonplace. He has zest, learning, industry, and 
an instinct for color and picturesqueness strength- 
ened through absorption of the Oriental poetry, by 
turns fanciful and sublime. Above all, he shows the 
advantage of new ground, or of ground newly sur- 
veyed, and an interest in his subject which is con- 
tagious. There is a man behind his cantos, and a 
man clever enough to move in the latest direction 
of our unsettled taste and thought. A distinct theme 
and motive, skilfully followed, are the next best things 
to inventive power. The Light of Asia was not an 
ordinary production. With The Lndian Song of Songs 



Edwin 

Arnold', 

1832- 



Causes oj 
his fioftu° 
larity. 



450 



ALFRED AUSTIN. 



Cp. "Poets 

of Amer- 
ica," p. 

465. 



Alfred 
A ustin : 
i835- 



Racy criti- 
tal Essays. 



and Pearls of the Faith it formed a triune exposition, 
on the poetic side, of the Hindoo and Arabian theolo- 
gies. Probably Arnold's ideals of Buddhism, even of 
Islamism, insensibly spring from a western conception, 
but he conveys them with sensuous warmth and much 
artistic skill. In these books and the translations 
from the Mahabharata, he works an old vein in a 
new way. Both the accuracy and ethics of his Ori- 
ental pieces have been lauded and attacked with equal 
vehemence. They have received great attention in 
that section of the United States where discussion is 
most " advanced " and speculative, and where Bud- 
dhism and theosophy are just now indiscriminately 
a fashion, and likely to pass away as have many fash- 
ions that led up to them. Arnold's longer works may 
soon be laid aside, but such a lyric as " After Death 
in Arabia," whether original or a paraphrase, will be 
treasured for its genuine beauty and serene pledges 
to human faith and hope. 

Alfred Austin's essays on " The Poetry of the 
Period " justly attracted notice. They were epigram- 
matic, conceived in a logical if disciplinary spirit, and 
almost the first severe criticism to which our " chief 
musicians " have been subjected. Here was one who 
dared to lay his hand on the sacred images. He bore 
down mercilessly upon " the feminine, narrow, domes- 
ticated, timorous " verse of the day, calling Tennyson 
feminine, Browning studious, Whitman noisy and 
chaotic, Swinburne and Morris not great because the 
times are bad, but only less tedious than the rest. 
While an iconoclast, his effort was constructive in its 
demand for the movement and passion that have an- 
imated more virile eras. When so lusty a critic him- 
self came out as a poet, it fairly might have been 



ALFRED AUSTIN. 



451 



expected that he would at least, whatever his demerits, 
avoid the tameness thus deplored. But movement and 
the divine fire are precisely what are lacking in Mr. 
Austin's respectable and somewhat labored books of 
verse. The Human Tragedy > a work by which he 
doubtless would wish to be judged, includes an early 
printed section, "Madonna's Child," which is a key 
to the poem. The whole requires ten thousand lines, 
cast in ottava rima and other standard forms. The 
Georgian measures are here, but not their force and 
glow. The movement is of the slowest, the philos- 
ophy prudish, and the story hard to follow : lovers 
are kept from marriage by religious zeal ; they don 
the Red Cross, travel and talk interminably, and fi- 
nally are shot, and die in each other's arms to the 
great comfort of the reader. " Savonarola " is a bet- 
ter work, — a studious tragedy, but not relieved by 
humor and realism, and with few touches that are 
imaginative. The title - piece of At the Gate of the 
Convent is artistic and interesting, and is followed by 
a good deal of contemplative verse, mostly lyrical in 
form, with the lofty ode not slighted. What we miss 
is the incense of divine poesy. The author's satirical 
interludes have point, and I have seen graceful lyrics 
from his pen ; but his ambitious verse, on whatever 
principle composed, is not of the class that reaches 
the popular heart, nor likely, on the other hand, to 
capture a select group of votaries like those so loyal 
from the outset to Rossetti and Browning. 

In every generation there is some maker of books 
who, without being a great writer, figures as such in 
his own and ether minds. His thorough belief in his 
function and his hold upon a faithful constituency 
are things which men of better parts may not envy 



"The 
Hitman 
Tragedy, 
1876. 



Lewis 
Morris '■ 
1834- 



452 



LEWIS MORRIS. 



A mbitious 
facility. 



him, yet find beyond their reach. Lewis Morris with 
his Epic of Hades, Gwen, Songs of Two Worlds, and 
other works of many editions, seems to be a writer 
whose fluent verse satisfies the popular need for rhyth- 
mical diet. Certain observances usually are noted in 
poetry of this kind. Its author handles a pretentious 
theme, and at much length, thus giving his effort 
an air of importance. He falls into the manner of 
popular models, and with great facility. He has a 
story to tell, or some lesson to teach, in all cases 
trite enough to an expert, but more impressive to the 
multitude than the expert suspects. Finally, he has 
zeal and measureless industry, and takes himself more 
seriously than if he were a sensitive and less robust 
personage. It would be wrong to say that Mr. Mor- 
ris's verse is no better than that of Pollok, Tupper, 
and Bickersteth. But he bears to this, the most re- 
fined of periods, very nearly the same relation which 
they bore respectively to their own. " The Epic of 
Hades " is written in diluted Tennysonian verse, its 
merit lying in simplicity and avoidance of affecta- 
tions. It is, however, only a metrical restatement of 
the Greek mythology according 'to Lempriere, and 
without that magic transmutation which alone jus- 
tifies a resmelting of the antique. " Gwen " is a drama 
in monologue — an English love-story, and, as far as 
" Maud " is dramatic, an attenuated Maud, without 
novelty of form or incident. In few of Morris's poems 
is there the radiant spirit which floods a word, a line, 
a passage, with essential meaning. In " The Ode of 
Life " he girds himself for a Pindaric effort, and 
strives with much grandiloquence to display the en- 
tire panorama of existence. His truest poetry, though 
neither he nor his admirers may so regard it, is found 



BA RLOW. — SMITH. — MRS. SINGLE TON. 



453 



among the " Songs of Two Worlds " and Songs Un- 
sung, and chiefly in simple pieces like "The Organ 
Boy." A longer poem, " Clytemnestra in Paris," 
should be mentioned for its originality and interest ; 
it is based on the trial reports of a recent murder, 
and shows the worth of a vivid subject and a con- 
ception due solely to the poet. Morris also is for- 
cible, though prolix, in some of his speculative theses, 
but leaves an impression of infallibility and that there 
are few subjects he would hesitate to preempt. 

A survey of these energetic writers leads to the 
inference that the more ambitious recent efforts do 
not acquaint us with the new poets who possess the 
greatest delicacy of hand and vision, and are subject 
to the most spiritual moods. Barlow's many volumes, 
and the successive books of Walter Smith, — author of 
Olrig Grange, Hilda, Kildrostan, etc., — only strengthen 
this inference. The vogue of Dr. Smith's produc- 
tions with a certain class is due to the fact, that, 
like Mrs. (" Violet Fane ") Singleton's very feminine 
poem of Denzil Place, each is what she honestly calls 
the latter — a story in verse. They are metrical novel- 
ettes, with the excess of interest and liveliness in 
favor of the lady, who gives zest to her romance by 
a warmth of realism, upon which the Scotch idyllist 
would doubtless blush to venture. His North Country 
Folk contains some good short pieces. Mrs. Single- 
ton's Queen of the Fairies is a tender story, purely 
and simply told. Her drama, Anthony Babington, is 
very creditable, above the common range of woman's 
work, which scarcely can be said of her miscellaneous 
lyrics. Her love-poetry is of all grades, and not al- 
ways in the best taste. Mrs. Pfeiffer has been an 
untiring producer of verse of a different cast. Her 



George 
Barlow i 
18- 



Walter C. 
Smith : 
18- 

Mrs. Sin- 
gleton .* 
18- 



Emily 

Pfeiffer* 

iS- 



454 



MRS. PFEIFFER.—MRS. KING. — MUNBY. 



Harriet 
E. Hamil- \ 
ton King 
1840- 



Arthur 
Joseph 
Munhy: 
1828- 



11 Doro- 
thy," 1880. 



A charm- 
ing idyl. 



early Poems embraced, besides a good ode " To the 
Teuton Woman," one or two striking ballads which 
indicated her natural bent, since developed in " The 
Fight at Rorke's Drift," and other spirited pieces. 
Under the Aspens is perhaps her most enjoyable col- 
lection. Her sonnets are thoughtful and intelligible^ 
in this wise differing from the work of many sonnet- 
mongers, and those on Shelley and George Eliot are 
well worth preservation. In her more arduous flights 
she often fails, but there is an air of refinement and 
sincerity in much that comes from her pen. 

Mrs. Hamilton King's long poem, The Disciples, has 
been widely read. Four disciples of Mazzini narrate, 
chiefly in blank-verse and rhymed heroics, the story 
of Garibaldi. The influence of the two Brownings is 
visible in Mrs. King's style. Her chief poem, the 
story of Fra Ugo Bassi, though too long, has strong 
passages, and effective pictures of Italian and Sicil- 
ian scenery. Her defects are a lack of condensed 
vigor and imagination. 

There are one or two marked exceptions to the in- 
ference just now drawn. When Mr. Munby's Dorothy 
appeared, sound-minded readers had a sense of re- 
freshment. It was a novel pleasure to light upon a 
complete and wholesome poem, faithfully and win- 
ningly going at its purpose, that of depicting pastoral 
English scenes and extolling health and strength as 
elements of beauty in woman. The heroine of this 
unique " country story in elegiac verse " is genuine 
as one of Millet's peasant-girls or Winslow Homer's 
fisher-maidens. Seldom, nowadays, do we find such 
pictures of farm-life, bucolic work and sports, outside 
of Hardy's and Blackmore's novels. The ploughing- 
scene is a subject for a painter, and he could find, 



JAMES THOMSON. 



455 



indeed, a score of charming themes in this one 
poem. Dorothy's sweet face and noble bearing re- 
quire, it is true, the device of an aristocratic father- 
hood, and there is possibly an implication of the 
benefits of cross-breeding. Munby equals Millet in 
honest candor, but I think he goes beyond nature in 
the one blemish of his idyl ; there is an over-coarse- 
ness in giving even a plough-girl hands that would 
disgust a navvy or pitman. As might be expected of 
the poet who wrote " Doris," that lovely pastoral, he 
is an artist, and has achieved a difficult feat in popu- 
larizing his elegiac distiches. 

A second exception is that of a man to whom a 
long chapter might be devoted, and whose life and 
writings, I doubt not, will be subjects of recurring 
interest during years to come. For it may almost 
be said of the late James Thomson, author of The 
City of Dreadful Night, that he was the English Poe. 
Not only in his command of measures, his weird im- 
aginings, intellectual power and gloom, but with re- 
spect to his errant yet earnest temper, his isolation, 
and divergence from the ways of society as now con- 
stituted, — and very strangely also in the successive 
chances of his life so poor and proud, in his final 
decline through unfortunate habits and infirmities, 
even to the sad coincidence of his death in a hos- 
pital, — do the man, his genius, and career afford an 
almost startling parallel to what we know of our 
poet of "the grotesque and arabesque." Shelley, 
Heine, Leopardi, Schopenhauer, — such were the writ- 
ers whom Thomson valued most, and whose influence 
is visible in his poetry. Yet the production already 
mentioned, and many others, have traits which are 
not found elsewhere in prose or verse. So much 



James 
Thomso?i , 
1834-82. 



Cp. "Poets 

of A mer- 
ica," pp. 
230-239. 



A sombre 
and power- 
ful genius 



45^ 



THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT" 



" The City 
of Dread- 
fid 

Night," 
1874. 



" Vane's 
Story" 



might be said of Thomson's work that I scarcely 
ought to touch upon it here. But " The City of 
Dreadful Night " may be characterized as a sombre, 
darkly wrought composition toned to a minor key 
from which it never varies. It is a mystical allegory, 
the outgrowth of broodings on hopelessness and 
spiritual desolation. The legend of Diirer's Melan- 
cholia is marvelously transcribed, and the isometric 
interlude, " As I came through the Desert thus it 
was," is only surpassed by Browning's " Childe Ro- 
land." The cup of pessimism, with all its conjuring 
bitterness, is drunk to the dregs in this enshrouded, 
and again lurid, but always remarkable poem. We 
have Omar Khayyam's bewilderment, without his ep- 
icurean compensations. Vane's Story, the title-piece 
of another volume, is similarly impressive, and minor 
lyrics are worth study for their intenseness and fre- 
quent strange beauty. "Vane's Story," though melo- 
dramatic, and curiously outspoken in its notion of 
life and death, its opposition to ordinary views, is 
not easily forgotten. On the side of artistic poetry 
we have the Arabic love-tale of "Weddah," and 
" Two Lovers " — a beautiful legend in quatrains. 
No one can read these, or the passionate " Mater 
Tenebrarum," or such a rhapsody as " He heard 
Her Sing," surcharged with melody and fire, without 
feeling that here was a true and foreordained poet. 
More profuse than Poe, less careful of his art, often 
purposely and effectively coarse, he holds a place of 
his own. He was a natural come-outer, and declared 
for all sorts and conditions of men, independently of 
rank or record. At times he proved, by such verses 
as " Sunday at Hampstead " and " Sunday on the 
River," that a blither nature underlay his gloom, and 



RADICAL AND ALTRUISTIC VERSE. 



457 



that happy experiences would have made his song 
less pessimistic. But if ever a poet learned in suffer- 
ing, it was he, and if the cup had passed from him 
we should have lost some powerful and distinctive 
verse. The posthumous volume, A Voice from the 
Nile, contains, with a friendly memoir by Bertram 
Dobell, the fugitive productions of Thomson's early 
and later years. 

What may be termed the poetry of conviction is 
not yet without a few representatives. Of these Call, 
the author of Reverberations and Golden Histories, is 
the most facile and poetic. Transcendentalism and 
positivism are curiously blended in his utterance, and 
he was one of the first after Emerson to recognize the 
scientific movement on its imaginative side. He has 
written, also, verse of an ideal kind, including some 
winning lyrics. One of the latter, " In Summer when 
the Days were long," is to be found in anthologies, 
and usually without the author's name. Miss Beving- 
ton's Poems, Lyrics, and Sonnets largely consist of ear- 
nest, but troubled, speculative verse. Miss Blind is 
another altruistic writer whose work, in The Prophecy 
of Saint Olan, has feeling, but is a trifle monotonous. 
Her later volume, The Heather on Fire, shows a de- 
cided gain in vigor and the art of picturesque word- 
painting. The radical and rebellious lyrics of Clarke, 
the young author of Sto7'm-Drift, evince talent, but 
his well-told " Story of Salerno " betrays a willing- 
ness to take risks in an ultimately profitless direc- 
tion. 



" A Voice 
from the 

Nile;' 
1884. 



The Poe- 
try of Con- 
viction. 

Wathen 

Mark 

Wilks 

Call: 

1817- 



Louisa S. 
Beviiigton 
{Mrs. 
Giiggen- 
berger) : 



Mathilde 
Blind: 



Herbert E 
Clarke : 



458 



VARIOUS RECENT POETS. 



A look 
round the 
field. 



Edmund 
Gosse : 
1849- 



VII. 

The poetry of many recent authors is still to be 
considered. They scarcely can be said to initiate a 
new school, or to divide themselves into groups like 
those formed by the minor poets of a slightly earlier 
time. Listening to various masters, and feeling the 
absence just now of any special tone or drift, more 
than one new aspirant essays some note of his own. 
Their very lack of assumption, and failure to claim 
by bold efforts a share of the attention secured by 
the novelists, imply a tacit acknowledgment that po- 
etry cannot maintain at the moment its former dom- 
inance in the English world of letters. This is an 
unpromising attitude ; but if they do not exhibit the 
ardent, full-throated confidence that begets leadership, 
there still are not a few who devote themselves to 
ideal beauty, and sing, in spite of discouragements, 
because the song is in them. They bear in one re- 
spect a mutual likeness. Though not given to the 
technical freaks of the recent art-extremists, the work 
of all displays a finish unknown at the outset of the 
Victorian period. The art of dexterous verse-making 
is so established that the neophyte has it at com- 
mand. As with the technics of modern instrumental 
music, it is within common reach and not a subject 
for much remark. 

Gosse, whom the public first knew as a poet, and 
who has become prominent as a literary scholar and 
critic, has not suffered general authorship to hinder 
his more ideal efforts for any length of time. That 
he is an attractive and competent master of English 
prose the leading journals and magazines bear con- 
stant witness, no less than his " Studies in Northern 



EDMUND GOSSE. 



459 



Literature," his edition of Gray, lectures on poetry, 
and other essays, biographies, and contributions to 
works that are richer for his aid. All this prose 
matter has been refined and bettered by his poetic 
sensibility. And as a poet, the title of the first 
book for which he was sole sponsor, On Viol and 
Flute, hints of his early quality. Though plainly 
alive to the renaissance movement, it was full of 
young blood and tuneful impulse ; its contents apper- 
taining to music, art, love, and the Norse legendary 
so familiar to him. His New Poems, six years later 
in date, are simpler, more restrained and meditative. 
They are deftly finished, pure and cool, a degree too 
cool for current taste. His classical sonnets — from 
the first he has been a good sonneteer — exhibit all 
these traits. He has a strong and logical sense of 
form, while his color is keyed to the tranquil and 
secondary, rather than the sensuous primitive tones. 
A grace in which he has few equals is the fidelity 
to nature of his pastorals and lyrics. There is true 
and sweet landscape, the very spirit of the English 
coppices, rivers, and moors, in his quiet pieces. 
Successful with the French forms which he did much 
to introduce, he uses them sparingly ; in fact, he 
seldom or never plays the tricks of the extreme dec- 
orationists, but trusts to the force of his thoughts 
and impressions. The contents of the volume, Fir- 
dausi in Exile, may be taken, I suppose, as his most 
mature and varied work, for the early drama of 
" King Erik," though creditably done and on a 
theme quite native to him, does not show his bent 
to be strongly dramatic. Reviewing his verse, one 
finds a genuine feeling for nature, and subtile ideal- 
ity, in "Sunshine before Sunrise," "The Whitethroat," 



'■ On Viol 
and Flute? 
1873. 



" New 

Poems,' 1 '' 

1879. 



" Firdausi 
in Exiled 



460 



W. S. BL UNT. — ERIC MA CKA Y. 



Wilfrid 
Scawen 
Blunt : 
1840- 



Eric 
Mackay . 
18. 



"Lying in the Grass," "The Shepherd of the 
Thames," "Obermann Yet Again." His "Theocri- 
tus " has delicious melody and charm. There is a 
return in his longer poems, " Firdausi " and " The 
Island of the Blest," to the Italian method of Hunt 
and Keats. Gosse is an example of the latter-day 
poet who does so well and learnedly in prose as 
scarcely to obtain full credit for his natural poetic 
gift. His verse, like that of Arnold, with whom its 
spirit is allied, grows on one by acquaintance. It is 
not often of a swift and lyrical character ; yet that 
he can be both resonant and picturesque is evident 
from a vigorous ballad, "The Cruise of the Rover," 
which will bear reading with the sea-ballads of Ten- 
nyson and Kingsley, and of itself bestows upon its 
author the name of poet. 

Blunt's Love Sonnets of Proteus are interesting as 
the artistic and sole utterance of their composer — 
the record, whether personal or not, of a man's suc- 
cessive love - experiences. This series of sonnets 
comes from one guided by the foremost English mas- 
ter, yet they are idiosyncratic and do not betray a 
weak or inexpert hand. Their savor of artificiality 
disappears when the writer ceases to be introspec- 
tive, as in the fresh and wholesome sonnet on Gi- 
braltar at the close. While the composition of these 
Protean verses seems to have been, as a man's love 
is said to be, an episode, it is plain that The Love 
Letters of a Violinist and Other Poems (1885), by Eric 
Mackay, are the handiwork of a brilliant metrical artist 
and poet born. It requires an effort to acknowledge 
this, after reading the preposterous " Introductory 
Notice " with which the author permits some absurd 
friend to preface the "Canterbury" edition of his 



MICHAEL FIELD: 



461 



book. Despite, however, the flaunting bush displayed 
at the portal, the wine within is rich and brimming, 
and of an exhilarating flavor. The series of Love 
Letters in six-line stanzas, while confessedly of the 
ecstatic virtuoso-type, is a beautiful and passionate 
work : its beauty that of construction, language, im- 
agery, — its passion characteristic of the artistic na- 
ture, and while intensely human, free from any 
taint of vulgar coarseness. The poem is quite orig- 
inal, its manner Elizabethan, freshened by a resort 
to the Italian fountain from which the clearest 
streams of English song so often have flowed. 
Mackay's poetic ability is of varied range. The 
appended studies and lyrics, though conspicuously 
uneven, all have quality. He is a natural lyrist, 
with a singing faculty, a novel metrical turn, such 
as few recent lyrists have at command. In some of 
his pieces we come suddenly upon a prosaic, almost 
grotesque, fault of expression ; but there is a fine 
impulsive spirit animating all. With the very strik- 
ing poem of " Mary Arden " we at last have, to apply 
Lowell's phrase, something new said of Shakespeare, 
and it is said sweetly and imaginatively. It is a pity 
that there was any clap-trap in the early heralding 
of these poems, for they do not stand in need of it. 
A claim to regard was at once established by 
" Michael Field," through her first volume, embrac- 
ing the dramas of Cattirhoe and Fair Rosamond. It 
seemed a reoccupation of Swinburne's early ground, 
but this was only true with respect to the choice of 
themes. " Callirhoe " is classical merely in subject 
and time, and is treated in a modern way, the char- 
acters being living men and women with a language 
compact of beauty and imagination. " Fair Rosa- 



" Michael 
Field"; 



462 



ROBERT BRIDGES. 



Robert 
Bridges ■ 
18- 



mond " is brief, strong ; the culminating act of a 
tragic scheme that has beguiled great artists to its 
handling. The dramas in this writer's second book, 
The Father's Tragedy, etc., reveal the same vigorous 
touch, but are diffuse and lack contrasting lights and 
shades ; there is no humor, — speech and action are 
always at concert-pitch. Their diction, however, is 
very original. Often an epithet carries force, and" is 
used in an entirely fresh way. This dramatist lacks 
proportion ; her manner betokens close study of the 
Elizabethans, but of the minor ones rather than the 
greatest. Her work is notable for its freedom, even 
audacity, and contrasts in all respects with that of 
Tennyson — so correct of style and proportion, yet 
without natural dramatic fire. Her advance in Bru- 
tus Ultor is not of the right kind. It seems as if 
she hunted history for plots and themes. This is a 
Roman tragedy, compressed and over- virile — even 
coarse at times, as if the effort to speak as a man 
were a forced one. " Michael Field " is ambitious 
and has warrant for it. Her motto should be 
"strength and beauty," and not strength alone. The 
Nero of Robert Bridges, an historical tragedy of the 
emperor's early reign, with narrower extremes of 
passion, is to my mind a more essentially virile 
work. There is a nobler severity in dialogue, which 
merits the name of Roman. The diction and blank- 
verse are restrained but impressive. The characters 
of Nero, Poppaea, Seneca, Agrippina, are distinctly 
drawn. While in a sense conventional, " Nero " 
shows the mark of a selfpoised, confident hand. A 
few of the lyrics in Bridges' eclectic and privately 
printed volume of 1884 strengthen my opinion that 
he is a very ideal and artistic poet. The elegy "I 



R. W. DIXON.— MISS ROBINSON. 



463 



have loved flowers that fade " is matchless in its 
way, apparently old in feeling yet perfectly original ; 
and some of his songs rival it in their brief melody. 

Canon Dixon's early work betrayed the close affin- 
ity between the new ecclesiasticism and the methods 
of Rossetti. His Odes and Eclogues, on the other 
hand, are the most extreme type of Anglo-classic 
verse, — that peculiar grafting of modern thought 
upon the Grecian stock in which Arnold was a lead- 
ing expert, and which is so fascinating to a scholar- 
poet. His latest lyrics have a peculiar wandering 
beauty. All his work is finished to a notable de- 
gree. Dixon and Bridges at this distance appear to 
be the chief lights of a quaintly esoteric Oxford 
School. 

Miss Robinson's verse is a delicate spray, en- 
gendered by influences which began with Ruskin 
and the pre-Raphaelites, and in the end supplied 
the motive of British raste in plastic and decorative 
art, in letters, and in all the refinements of social 
life. She shows the effect of culture upon an im- 
pressible feminine nature, placed among devotees 
of the beautiful, and breathing its atmosphere from 
her childhood. Her classical studies were like those 
of Mrs. Browning, with an aesthetic training super- 
added that was not obtainable in Mrs. Browning's 
time. Her first little book, A Handful of Honey- 
suckle, bears the obvious impress of Rossetti, — a 
shoot from his garden, but with new and fragrant 
blossoms of its own. The lyrics appended to her 
next work — a praiseworthy translation of The 
Crowned Hippolytus — were of a maturer cast. Af- 
terward, applying her gift to humane transcripts of 
real life, she wrote The New Arcadia, a group of 



Richard 
Watson 
Dixon : 



Agnes 
Mary 
Frances 
Robinson '. 
1857- 



464 



THEODORE WATTS. 



Catherine 

Christina 

(Fraser- 

Tytler) 

Liddell: 

1848- 

E. Nesbit . 

18- 



Theodore 
Watts : 
1S36- 



ballads in behalf of suffering womanhood and Eng- 
land's poor. Doubtless this was too grave an exper- 
imental task, for in turning at last to Italy, and its 
rispetti and stornelli, she seems thoroughly at home. 
Her book of songs, An Italian Garden, is the most 
essentially poetic of her works thus far. It breathes 
the Anglo-Italian spirit which is in fact her own. 
The rispetti forming her wreath of Tuscan cypress, 
with their beauty and sadness, are in every way 
characteristic of this poet, and in her most sugges- 
tive vein. Meanwhile her acquirements enable her 
to take an active part in the critical and biographi- 
cal industries which the inevitable book-purveyor now 
opens for every rising author. Of her sister poets 
not yet mentioned, Mrs. Liddell and Miss Nesbit 
deserve notice. The former's " Songs in Minor 
Keys " are suffused with deep religious feeling, al- 
ways expressed in good taste. Miss Nesbit's " Lays 
and Legends " suggest immature but promising indi- 
viduality. She is capable of strong emotion, which 
is most effective in her shorter lays. 

Watts, the scholarly critic of poetry and romantic 
art, and a frequent contributor of verse to the liter- 
ary journals, has thus far made no public collection 
of his poems. My knowledge of them is confined 
to some very perfect sonnets — a form of verse in 
which he is a natural and acknowledged master — 
and a few lyrics of an elevated type. His ode to a 
Caged Petrel shows an eloquent method and a per- 
ception of Nature's grander aspects. He apparently 
seeks to revive the broad feeling of the Georgian 
leaders ; at all events, his touch is quite independent 
of any bias derived from the eminent poets with 
whom his life has been closely associated. Among 



WA TSOJV. — LEE-HAMIL TON. — E. MYERS. 



465 



the many writers of good sonnets I may mention 
Caine — Rossetti's young friend and memorialist. 
Professor D6wden, whose critical work is always of a 
high order, has published a volume of poems, from 
which two or three imaginative examples of the same 
class have met my eye. 

Watson, judging from The Prince's Quest, is a dis- 
ciple of Morris and a good one — a poet of slow 
movement, from whom we have also careful sonnets 
and Landorian quatrains. Lee - Hamilton's varied 
Poems and Transcripts, with the studies in Apollo and 
Marsyas, remind one of the sculptor-poet Story by 
their reflection of Browning's manner ; yet where he 
is Browningesque or Rossettian it is usually because 
the subject cannot be so well treated in another way. 
He has a taste for the psychologically-dramatic, and 
usually interests the reader. " The Bride of Porphy- 
rin " and " The Wonder of the World " are far from 
commonplace, and his sonnets are exceptionally fine. 
Dawson is quite possessed by Rossetti, but has re- 
sources of fancy, rhythm, decoration. If he contrives 
to outgrow his pupilage, something of worth may be 
expected from him. There is much simplicity and 
grace in the Poems of Ernest Myers, largely suggested 
by study and travel, and they belong to the com- 
posite art school. The contents of Wyville Home's 
volumes are too diffuse, and there is nothing in his 
Lay Canticles superior to a few sonnets in the earlier 
Songs of a Wayfarer. His failures, however, are those 
of one who aims high and in time may reach his 
mark. 

Many of the young writers devote themselves to 
cabinet-picture making, whether their dainty verse is 
properly idyllic or dramatic. The scenic tendency 



T. Hall 

Caine : 



Edward 
Dowden : 
iS43- 



William 
Watson : 



Eugene 
James 
Lee-Ham- 
ilton : 
1845- 



William 
James 
Dawson : 
1854- 



Ernest 

Myers : 
1844- 

J. Wyvilh 
Home : 
18- 



Crayon- 
Verse. 



4 66 



LEFROY. — POLLOCK. — RAFFALO VICH. 



Edward 
Cracroft 
Lefroy : 



Walter 
Herries 
Pollock: 
1850- 



Mark An- 
dre Raffa- 
lovich : 
18- 



increases, just as it has grown, with an Irving to 
foster it, upon the stage. New poets strive, through 
affecting the mind's eye, to outdo the painter's ap- 
peal to the bodily vision. This invasion of a neigh- 
boring domain is a failure to utilize their own, and 
an undervaluation of the noblest of arts. Very pretty 
things of the kind, however, are often produced in 
this way. 

A graceful scholar-poet is Lefroy, whose Echoes in- 
troduce us to old friends in a new guise. His open 
method is to compress into a single sonnet the tenor 
of some well-known poem. Gautier's " L'Art," al- 
ready paraphrased by Dobson, thus appears in son- 
net-form, and many idyls of Theocritus are treated 
similarly. But these are supplemented by pleasing 
sonnets of English cloister and outdoor life. Pollock's 
Songs and Rhymes, with a prelude by Lang, make up 
a little book of neat and polished verse a-la-mode, 
which doubtless scarcely represents the mature or se- 
rious purpose of its author. Raffalovich's Cyril and 
Lionel contains well-turned verse of a motive which, 
although it is not imitative, I find difficult to under- 
stand. By his name this writer would seem to be 
more justified than others in eking out his book with 
lyrics in other tongues than the English. Since the 
date of " Chastelard " this practice has been more or 
less affected by the new men. Swinburne put French 
songs into a play where they rightly belong, as an 
obligato to the action and discourse. Now every luta- 
nist splits his tongue, like a parrot's, to sing strange 
words, — but there are capabilities still left in our 
native English. If such linguistic feats must be es- 
sayed, why not compose in the universal Volapuk, 
— or more mellinuously in the late Mr. Pearl An- 
drews's " Alwato " ? 



OSCAR WILDE. — RENNELL RODD. 



467 



A phase of the aesthetic crusade in defense of 
poetry as an utterance of the beautiful solely, — a 
movement having almost perfect development at its 
start with Keats so long ago, — has appeared in the 
outgivings of some of Ruskin's disciples, and avow- 
edly in the verse of Oscar Wilde. His Poems, with 
all their conceits, are the fruit of no mean talent. 
The opening group, under the head " Eleutheria," 
are the strongest. A lyric to England, " Ave Im- 
peratrix," is manly verse, — a poetic and eloquent 
invocation. " The Garden of Eros," " Burden of 
Itys," " Charmides," are examples of the sensuous 
pseudo - classicism. There is a good deal of Keats, 
and something of Swinburne, in Wilde's pages, but 
his best master is Milton, whom he has studied, as 
did Keats, to good effect. His scholarship and clev- 
erness are evident, as well as a native poetic gift. 
The latter indeed might prove his highest gift, if 
tended a little more seriously, and possibly he could 
be on better terms with himself in his heart of 
hearts if he would forego his fancies in behalf of his 
imagination — as there is still time for him to do. 
It is fair to accept the statement of his own ground, 
in his preface to the decorative verse of his friend 
Rennell Rodd, — though one doubts whether Gautier 
would not have dubbed the twain jennes brodeurs, 
rather than jeunes guei-riers, du drapeaic romantique. 
The apostles of our Lord were filled, like them, with 
a " passionate ambition to go forth into far and fair 
lands with some message for the nations and some 
mission for the world.'" But not until many centu- 
ries had passed were their texts illuminated to the 
extent displayed by Mr. Rodd and his printer, with 
their resources of India - paper, apple-green tissue, 



Oscar 

Wilde. 

1856- 



RenneU 

Rodd: 

1858- 



468 



STEVENSON. — COLONIAL POETS. — SHARP. 



Robert 
Louis 

Balfour 
Stevenson : 
1850- 



William 
Sharp : 
18- 



Colonial 
and 

Proziincial 
Verse. 



vellum, and all the rarities desired by those who die 
of a rose in aromatic pain. Yet the verse of Rose 
Leaf and Apple Leaf is not so effeminate as one 
would suppose. The minstrel's greensickness is now 
well o er, judging from his Feda and other Poems ; 
and in throwing it off he gives a token of the vigor 
needful for a decisive mark. 

Now, as a minor but genuine example of poetic 
art, not alone for art's sake, but for dear nature's 
sake, — in the light of whose maternal smile all art 
must thrive and blossom if at all, — take A Child 's 
Garden of Verses by Stevenson. This is a real ad- 
dition to the lore for children, and to that for man, 
to whom the child is father. The flowers of this lit- 
tle garden spring from the surplusage of a genius 
that creates nothing void of charm and originality. 
Thanks, then, for the fresh, pure touch, for the reve- 
lation of childhood with its vision of the lands of 
Nod and Counterpane, and of those next-door Foreign 
Lands spied from cherry-tree top, and beyond the 
trellised wall. 

VIII. 

There is promise in Earth's Voices, by Sharp, who 
celebrates Nature, not in a Wordsworthian vein — 
but somewhat after the manner of Heine and the 
Germans. The trouble with a long series of studies, 
like " Earth's Voices " or the rispetti entitled " Tran- 
scripts from Nature," is that much of it is mere word- 
painting, and only a few numbers are apt to be spon- 
taneous. " Sospitra " is his strongest effort. Pos- 
sibly Sharp — whose critical biography of Rossetti 
is of value — should not be named with the Aus- 
tralian contingent of writers, though some of his 



GORDON. — SLADEN. — ROBERTS, ETC. 



469 



sketches and ballads are by one familiar with the 
South Sea Continent. But there is no questioning 
the local flavor of Gordon's "Bush Ballads," or the 
ringing, spirited effectiveness of his lyrics of the field, 
the turf, and the campaign. Receiving from Mel- 
bourne the posthumous collection of his Poems, I 
was at once taken by the dash and verve of this 
ex-cadet and Australian refugee, — a sheep-farmer, 
sportsman, amateur steeple-chase rider, and author of 
" How We Beat the Favorite," the best racing ballad 
in the language. Gordon's tragic and untimely death 
may, or may not, have involved a loss to poetry : he 
was one of the headstrong adventurous spirits whose 
talent is unquestionable, but whose restless nature 
and lack of fixed purpose hinder its full development, 
and from whom their mates are always expecting 
more than is achieved. Gordon was all by turns and 
nothing long. There are plentiful traces of Byron, 
Browning, Swinburne, in his careless style ; but when 
most himself he bears to Australia the relation of 
Harte to California, as a poet. What originality marks 
A Poetry of Exiles and Australian Sketches, by Sladen, 
is mainly the effect upon one reared in England of 
a novel atmosphere and sky. Otherwise, Coelum non 
animum mutant may be said of many colonial poets, 
and certainly of this scholar of Trinity, Oxford. His 
key-note is that love of motherland, not yet stifled 
even among Americans, and which the home-keep- 
ing Briton does not fully comprehend. Of a few 
rising British Canadian poets Roberts, the author of 
In Divers Tones, seems to be foremost. His verse 
is thoughtful and finished, and conveys a hopeful ex- 
pression of the native sentiment now perceptible in 
a land so long only u the child of nations." Toru 



Adam 
Litidsay 
Gordon : 
18- 



Douglas 
B. W. 
Sladen : 
18- 



Charles 
George 
Douglas 
Roberts '. 
i860 



47o 



SONG, SENTIMENT, AND FANCY. 



Toru 
Dutt: 

1856-77. 



A lexander 
A nderson : 
18- 



Song, 
Sentiment, 
and Fancy. 

Hamilton 
Aide, 18- 

Marzials. 



Clement 
William 
Scott : 
?.84i- 



Dutt's Ballads and Legends of Hindustan, edited by 
Gosse, are the pressed leaves of a tropic flower that, 
striving to adapt itself to an atmosphere not its own, 
exhaled some fragrance ere it died. Her verse was 
curiously western, while narrating legends of a faith 
which this " pure Hindu, full of the typical qualities 
of her race and blood," had learned not to believe. 
It has touches of lyrical melody, and an aspiration 
that might in time have strengthened into fulfilment. 
The list of colonial aspirants in Australia, Tasmania, 
India, and elsewhere, is growing, and after a season 
more than one of these imperial outposts will give 
voice to a language of its own. Among local and 
provincial verse - makers, Anderson, " the surface- 
man," may be mentioned as one of the best. His 
dialect-pieces, and poems "of the rail," are welcome, 
but when he ventures toward the high precincts of 
Keats and Shelley he leaves his proper ground. 

The song-writers and makers of popular verse are 
relatively fewer than of old. Many of Aide's Songs 
without Music are excellent, — the work of a con- 
noisseur. He preserves for us a little of that spring- 
time sentiment, without which the world were colder. 
The later songs of Marzials, who is both composer 
and balladist, are far more enjoyable than his early 
rococo-verse which served as a text for a comment 
in Chapter VIII. As I have said elsewhere, a poet 
is to be envied who can hear, wherever he goes, his 
own words and music. In Clement Scott's Lays 
of a Londoner there are some effective, sympathetic 
lyrics, — "A Prisoner of War," the " Story of a 
Stowaway," "The Midshipmite," — and apt memorial 
poems. His lighter verse also marks him as a suc- 
cessor to the London group of Hood, Jerrold, Thacfe 



THE POETIC DRAMA. — MERIVALE. 



471 



eray, etc. The Lazy Minstrel is Ashby-Sterry's latest 
collection of old-style ditties, and warranted by the 
favor bestowed upon " Boudoir Ballads." Most of 
his work is more strictly society - verse than much 
which goes under that name. A queer but popular 
field is that laid out and occupied by Dodgson, who, 
as " Lewis Carroll," has proffered a merry antidote to 
the hyper-sesthetic and other fads of the day. His 
Rhyme and Reason contains " Phantasmagoria " and 
"The Hunting of the Snark " — bright audacities in 
which the fancy that created " Alice in Wonder- 
land " plays without tether, and affords delight to the 
healthy and fun-loving mind. Courthope, also, has a 
clever vein of his own. His Ludibrice Lunce, a. light 
satire on "woman's rights," and The Paradise of 
Birds, an Aristophanic extravaganza, are enlivened by 
an easy command of measures, scholarly humor, and 
abundant fancy. 

The few who are bold enough to write poetry for 
the dramatic stage lead a forlorn hope, and at least 
deserve consideration. But first a word of tribute is 
due to Dr. Marston, of whose works a general col- 
lection was made in 1876. Some of his dramas were 
well suited to their purpose, and scenes of true poe- 
try and emotion are not wanting in " Strathmore " and 
other plays. Merivale is the most elevated of the 
dramatists not hitherto mentioned, and success as an 
artistic playwright is of marked advantage to a dra- 
matic poet. The White Pilgrim is a good poetic dra- 
ma, with weirdly imaginative scenes. Florien, a later 
tragedy, is scarcely a literary advance ; but it dis- 
plays the author's skill in historic reproduction, is con- 
sistently English, and of decided interest. Merivale's 
songs — the " Venetian Boat-Song, " for example — 



Joseph 
Ashby- 
S terry : 
183S- 



Charles 
Lutwidge 
Dodgson : 
about 1833- 



William 

John 

CourU 

hope : 
1842- 



The 

Poetic 
Drama. 

Westland 
Marston : 
1819- 



Herman 
Charles 

Merivale '. 
1839- 



472 



GILBER T. — RECENT TRANS LA TORS. 



" Ross 
Neil" 18- 



William 
Gorman 
Wills : 
1S28- 



William 
Schwenck 
Gilbert: 
1836- 



Transla- 



are especially good, as those of a dramatist should 
be. " Ross Neil " has been a fertile composer of 
metrical dramas and plays. Of the many contained 
in five books published since 1872, I have seen only 
those grouped with Andrea the Painter. They are 
creditable for incident, situation, language, and cor^ 
struction, but the writer seldom gains a height com= 
mensurate with her poetic aim. Wills's Melchior, a 
long romantic art-poem, which I mention as the work 
of an active playwright, will not increase the reputa- 
tion of the author of " The Man o' Airlie " and " Clau- 
dian." Plainly the shield has been touched with most 
lightness and precision by the bearer of Mercury's 
caduceus, — that wit and singular genius, Gilbert, 
whose Original Plays, delightful with humor and pa- 
thos, have captured the airiest spirit of our time and 
added to " the gayety of nations." " Pygmalion and 
Galatea," " The Wicked World," — and that little 
poem so charming in scene and dialogue, so pure and 
original as a piece of fancy, " Broken Hearts," — may 
not be cast in the noblest moulds of imaginative art ; 
but for ideality, truth to nature, and thorough adap- 
tation of means to ends, they have not recently been 
surpassed in English dramatic literature. 

The field of translation is less persistently tilled than 
at the date of my former review. The British scholar 
no longer deems it his bounden duty to produce a 
fresh metrical version of Horace. There have been 
a few more translations of Homer, — the most note- 
worthy being Cayley's Iliad, and the prose texts by 
Lang and his associates. Kegan Paul's literal and 
lineal " Faust " appeared in 1872, and five years later 
Miss Swanwick published her translation of the same 
drama. Attention has been paid to the Italian and 



£cole INTERM&DIAIRE. 



473 



Garde- 
Joyeztse. 
Cp. "Poets 
of Amer- 
ie-a, pp. 
275> 448. 



Dobson. 
Cp.p.zjs. 



Spanish masterpieces, and to minor reproductions 
from the Turkish, Russian, and other modern anthol- 



IX. 

Finally we observe what has been, all in all, the 
most specific phase of British minstrelsy since 1875. 
This is seen in the profusion of lyrical elegantiae, 
the varied grave and gay ditties, idyls, metrical cameos 
and intaglios, polished epistles and satires, classed 
as Society Verse, the Court Verse of older times. 
Perceiving signs of its revival, I could not foresee 
that it would flourish as it has, and really constitute 
the main thing upon which a lyrical interval would 
plume itself. Its popularity is curious and significant. 
The pioneer in verse of a movement already evident 
in society and household art was Austin Dobson. 
This favorite poet, by turns the Horace, Suckling, 
Prior, of his day, allying a debonair spirit with the 
learning and precision of Queen Anne's witty fabu- 
lists, has well advanced a career which began with 
"Vignettes in Rhyme." Enjoying the quality of that 
book, I felt that its poet, to hold his listeners, must 
change his song from time to time. Of this he has 
proved himself fully capable. His second volume, 
Proverbs in Porcelain, gave us a series of little " prov- 
erbs " in dialogue, exquisite bits of " Louis Quinze," 
and perfectly unique in English verse. Nothing can 
excel the beauty and pathos of " Good-Night, Ba- 
bette," with the Angelus song low-blended in its dy- 
ing fall. The lines "To a Greek Girl," in the same 
collection, and the paraphrase of Gautier, " Ars Vic- 
trix," superadd a grace even beyond that of Dob- 
son's early lyrics. Who has not read the "Idyl of 



474 



AUSTIN DOBSON. 



His many 
followers. 



A n ltcole 
Interme- 
diaire. 



the Carp," and the racy ballad of " Beau Brocade " ? 
Here, too, are his little marvels in the shape of the 
rondel, rondeau, villanelle, triolet, — those French 
forms which he has handled with an ease almost in- 
imitable, yet so wantonly provoking imitation. 

Perhaps Dobson more than others has shaped the 
temper of our youngest poets. A first selection from 
his works appeared in the United States in 1880, its 
welcome justifying a second in 1885. Meanwhile the 
choice editions de luxe, Old World Idyls and At the 
Sign of the Lyre, represent the greater portion of his 
verse. Any author might point to such a record 
with pride ; there is scarcely a stanza in these vol- 
umes wanting in extreme refinement, and this with- 
out marring its freshness and originality. In his 
place one should never yield — as there are stray 
omens that he sometimes is yielding — to any popu- 
lar or journalistic temptation that would add a line 
to these fortunate pieces, except under the impulse 
of an artistic and spirited mood. 

The influence of Dobson and his associates has 
been a characteristic — a symptomatic — expression 
of the interval between the close of the true Victo- 
rian period and the beginning of some new and, let 
us hope, inspiring poetic era. It has created, in 
fact, a sort of kcole intermediaire, of which the gay 
and buoyant minstrelsy is doubtless preferable to 
those affected heroics that bore every one save the 
egotist who gives vent to them. For real poetry, 
though but a careless song, light as thistle-down and 
floating far from view, will find some lodgment for 
its seed even on distant shores and after long time. 
The roundelays of Villon, of Du Bellay and his 
Pleiade, waited centuries for a fit English welcome 



ANDREW LANG. 



475 



and interpretation. Lang's Ballads and Lyrics of old 
France, in 1872, captured the spirit of early French 
romantic song. Nine years afterward, his Ballades 
in Blue China chimed in with the temper of our new- 
fangled minstrel times. Such craftsmanship as the 
villanelle on Theocritus, the ballade to the same 
poet, and the ballades "Of Sleep" and "Of the 
Book- Hunter," came from a sympathetic hand. In 
the later " Ballades and Verses Vain " are new trans- 
lations, etc., and a few striking addenda, memorably 
the resonant sonnet on the Odyssey. A "Ballade 
of his Choice of a Sepulchre " is Lang's highest 
mark as a lyrist, and perhaps the freest vein of his 
Rhymes a la Mode is in the long poems that do not 
fall under that designation, such as "The Fortunate 
Islands." He has almost preempted the "Ballade," 
but his later specimens of it are scarcely up to his 
own standard. " Cameos " and " Sonnets from the 
Antique " are at the head of their class, and natu- 
rally, for no other Oxonian is at once so variously 
equipped a scholar and so much of a poet. The fi- 
delity, diction, and style of his prose translations of 
Homer and Theocritus are equally distinguished. 
Thus far his most serious contribution to poetry is 
Helen of Troy, — a poem taking, as one would ex- 
pect, the minority view of its legend, and depicting 
the fair cause of Troy's downfall as a victim to the 
plots of the gods. It is written felicitously in eight- 
line stanzas of a novel type, and, while not strong 
in special phrases and epithets, has much tranquil 
beauty. On his working-day side, readers never wait 
long for something bright from this versatile, inven- 
tive feuilletonist, — a master of persiflage, whose 
learned humor and audacity, when he is most insu- 
lar, are perhaps the most entertaining. 



Andrew 

Lang: 

1844- 



476 



THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE. 



Considera- 
tions sug- 
gested by 
this review. 



Question of 
the outlook. 



If imitation be flattery, Dobson and Lang have 
breathed sufficient of its incense. Their " forms " 
have haunted a* multitude of young singers, and 
proved as taking and infectious as the airs of Sulli- 
van's operettas. They have crossed the seas and 
multiplied in America more rapidly than the English 
sparrows which preceded them, — so that, as in the 
case of their feathered compatriots, the question is 
whether a check can be put to the breed. As I 
have said, this elegant rhyming, however light and 
delicate, is in fact a special feature of the latest 
Victorian literature, and, with its pretty notes ting- 
ling on the ear, is a text for some last words in dis- 
cussion of what has gone before. 

First, let me say that it is but shallow reasoning 
to worry over the outbreak of any fancy or fashion 
in art. Let a good thing — a much better thing 
than any form in verse — be overdone, and people 
will signify their weariness of it so decisively that 
the quickness of its exit will be as surprising as its 
temporary vogue. 

What conclusions, then, are derivable from_ our 
summary of the British poetic movement of the last 
dozen years ? We have paid tribute to the noble 
chants of a few masters who still teach us that 
Poetry is the child of the soul and the imagination. 
But one looks to the general drift of the younger 
poets, who initiate currents to the future, for an an 
swer to the question, — What next ? The direct in- 
fluences of Keats, Wordsworth, and Shelley are no 
longer servilely displayed ; few echo even Tennyson : 
Browning, Rossetti, and Swinburne are more widely 



EXISTING CHARACTERISTICS. 



477 



favored ; but ancestral and paternal strains are as 
much confused and blended in the verse of the new- 
est aspirants as in genealogy. Their work is more 
composite than ever, judging from the poets selected 
as fairly representative. Only two of its divisions 
are sufficiently pronounced for even a fanciful classi- 
fication. One is the Stained-Glass poetry, if I may so 
term it, that dates from " The Blessed Damozel " and 
cognate models by Rossetti and his group ; the other, 
that Debonair Verse, whose composers apply them- 
selves by turns to imitation of the French minstrelsy 
and forms, and to the aesthetrc embroidery of Ken- 
sington-stitch rhyme, — for in each of these pleasant 
devices the same practitioners excel. Now the class 
first named, and the first division of the second, are 
of alien origin : they are exotics — their renaissance 
is of the chivalry, romance, mysticism, and balladry 
of foreign literatures. Only that witty, gallant verse 
which takes its cue from the courtly British models 
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is an ex- 
ception, — and that, whatever its cleverness and pop- 
ularity, can hardly be termed inventive. 

The next thing to be noted is the finical nicety to 
which, as we see, the technique of poetry has ad- 
vanced. Never were there so many capable of pol- 
ishing measures quite unexceptionable as to form 
and structure, never fewer whose efforts have lifted 
them above what is, to be sure, an unprecedented 
level — but still a level. The cult of beauty and art, 
delightfully revived so long ago by Hunt and Keats, 
has brought us at last to this. Concerning inspira- 
tion and the creative impulse, we have seen first : 
that recent verse-makers who are most ambitious and 
prolific have not given much proof of exceptional 



Stained- 
Glass 

poetry. 



The Debo- 
nair Poets. 



Artisan- 



Two kinds 

oflimita~ 

Hon. 



478 



TRUE REALISM. 



The epoch. 



True 
Realism. 



genius. Their productions have the form and dimen- 
sion of masterpieces, and little more. Secondly : 
those who appear to be real poets, shrinking from 
the effort to do great things in an uncongenial time, 
reveal their quality by lovely minor work — some- 
times rising to an heroic and passionate but briefly 
uttered strain. And it is better to do small things 
well than to essay bolder ventures without heart or 
seriousness. Still, I think they must now and then 
doubt the importance of thus increasing, without 
specific increase of beauty and novelty, the mass of 
England's rich anthology. Looking back, years from 
now, it will be seen that one noble song on a com- 
pulsive theme has survived whole volumes of elabo- 
rate, soulless artisanship by even the natural poets. 

What is it, then, that chills the " heart and seri- 
ousness " of those most artistic and ideal ? The rise 
of conditions adverse to the imaginative exercise of 
their powers has been acknowledged from the first 
in these essays. It is clear that instinct has become 
measurably dulled, as concerns the relative value of 
efforts ; so that poets do not magnify their calling 
as of old. There is less bounce, and, unfortunately, 
still less aspiration. Nor has the modern spirit, now 
freed from sentimental illusions, as yet brought its 
wits to a thorough understanding of what true Real- 
ism is — viz., that which is just as faithful to the 
ideal and to the soul of things as to obvious and 
external matters of artistic treatment. Here again 
the law of reaction will in the end prevail. Its op- 
eration is already visible in the demand for more in- 
ventive and wholesomely romantic works of fiction; 
and this is but the forerunner of a corresponding 
impulse by which the poet — the maker — the crea« 



SCHOLARS WORK. 



479 



tive idealist — whose office it is to perceive and il- 
lumine all realities, both material and spiritual, will 
have his place again. 

For a time, however, the revival of creative prose- 
fiction may occupy more than one poetic mind. 
Novel-writing is more vigorously pursued than ever, 
by fresh hands. Journalism opens new and broader 
courts tempting for their influence, sense of power, 
and the subsistence yielded. Criticism, book-making, 
book-editing, are flourishing industries. Scholar's 
work is steadily pursued, and carried even to analy- 
sis of living authors. Our poetry itself is too schol- 
arly. A recent happy statement concerning Byron, 
that he "did not know enough," does not apply to 
the typical latter-day poet. He has too much learn- 
ing withal, of a technical, linguistic, treasure-hunting 
sort. The over - intellectuality and scholarship of 
many lyrists absorb them in curious studies, and 
deaden their impulse toward original and glowing ef- 
forts. They revive and translate, and borrow far too 
much the hoardings of all time. Even in their judg- 
ments they set an undue relative value upon the 
learning or philosophy of a master under discussion. 
Moreover, their literary skill and acquirements make 
the brightest of them serviceable aids to the pub- 
lishers. No sooner are their names in public favor 
than the great houses smooth their way along the 
lucrative paths of book-making. Great and small 
houses have multiplied, and printing is easy and uni- 
versal. To all this we indeed owe attractive series 
of critico-biographical volumes, anthologies catholic 
and select, encyclopaedias, translations, and texts 
without end. Good and welcome as much of this 
work is, my present question must be : Does it not 



Cp. " Poets 
of A mer- 
zca," pp. 
26, 27, 437 5 
463- 



Learning 
vs. Imagi- 
nation. 



Book- 
making* 



' 



480 



LACK OF A NATIONAL STYLE. 



Lack of a 

national 

style. 



chasten and absorb the poet's faculties ? Has he 
not, at last, too good a literary market ? The com- 
mon-sense reply is, that, after all, he must live, — 
and the belief is antiquated that poets, like caged 
birds, sing better for starving. Yet if you chance of 
late upon a unique and terribly earnest bard, — a 
man like Thomson, — you find that he was out of 
the literary " swim " and usually out of pocket ; 
while his well-to-do brother more often is the man 
of letters, corresponding to Southey and Wilson 
rather than to their fiery contemporaries. If the po- 
etic drama, for example, were now more frequently 
calling for elevated work, imagination and subsistence 
would both be subserved: The stage does make 
welcome beautiful and witty verse of a light order, 
but what it regularly supports is the facile play- 
wright ; and its operettas and scenic plays are logi- 
cally adapted to the zest for amusement and the 
ruling decorative frenzy. 

The desire of the critic and the public alike, and 
first of all, is for something new and additional. 
But that which is new is of higher worth when it 
contributes to the furtherance of a true national 
style. What is Spanish, French, German, we at once 
recognize as such, however different from previous 
works of like origin ; but how seldom the later Vic- 
torian minstrelsy is essentially English ! A recent 
article by W. P. P. Longfellow criticises existing 
tendencies of architecture in Great Britain. He re- 
cords the progress of a style which advanced to its 
culmination with the design for the new Law Courts, 
and until the " Victorian Gothic was everywhere." 
He writes that — 

" Success was due, not so much to the style chosen as 



WHAT THIS IMPLIES. 



48 1 



to the fact, that, having found a style which suited them, 
the English followed it unitedly and persistently. Here 
seemed to be a national movement, strong, deep, and 
promising to endure. . . . Then, suddenly, at the signal 
of two or three restless and clever young men, whose 
eyes had caught something else, the English architects 
with one accord threw the whole thing away; as a boy, 
after working the morning through at some plaything, 
with a sudden weariness drops his unfinished toy to run 
after the first butterfly. . . . They have seemed to show 
us that their progress was at the impulse of whim rather 
than conviction, ruled rather by fashion than tradition. 
It is the mobile Frenchman who in this century has set 
us an example of steadiness. If his work, like all the 
rest in our day, lacks some of the higher qualities of older 
and greater styles, it has, more than any other modern 
work, the coherency and firmness that are at the bottom 
of all style." 

The point thus made has a bearing upon more 
arts than one. A style of architecture, it is true, is 
the outcome of centuries. Literary style has a read- 
ier formation and is quickly affected by individual 
leadership. Yet a national manner has distinguished 
the most subtile and inclusive of literary forms in 
every important era. This is not sustained by curious 
devices and imitations, however choice and attractive, 
but by harmonizing personal quality with the national 
note of expression. I think there is a lack of recog- 
nizable and pervasive style in our English poetry of 
the period ; that, with the exception of the portion 
which confessedly revives the manners of Queen 
Anne's time and the Georgian, it is chiefly English 
in its intense desire to escape from Anglicism. 

What does this imply, — style being a visible em- 
blem of spiritual traits, — other than a want, so far 



See « The 

New 

Princeton 

Review" 

March, 

1887. 



A deduc 
tion. 



482 



THE SAME ARTS THAT DID GAIN 



Post 

nubila 



as poetry can indicate it, of individual and national 
purpose ? Breadth, passion, and imagination seem to 
be the elements least conspicuous in much of the re- 
cent song. The new men withdraw themselves from 
the movement of their time and country, forgetting 
it all in dreamland — in no-man's-land. They com- 
pose sonnets and ballads as inexpressive of the reso- 
lution of an imperial and stalwart people as are the 
figures upon certain modern canvases — the dis- 
traught, unearthly youths and maidens that wander 
along shadowy meads by nameless streams, with their 
eyes fixed on some hand we "cannot see, which 
beckons " them away. 

It may be that before we can hope for a return 
of poetic vigor some heroic crisis must be endured, 
some experience undergone, of more import than the 
mock-campaigns in weak and barbarous provinces, 
whereby Great Britain preserves her military and col- 
onizing traditions, and avoids the stagnation of utter 
repose. The grand old realm bids fair to have her 
awakening. There are clouds enough to bode sterner 
issues and nearer conflicts than she has faced since 
Cromwell's time. Ireland is filling men's ears with 
her threats and appeals. In a season of jubilee so- 
cialists crowd St. Paul's, their banners inscribed with 
" Justice and Liberty, or Death " ; the Marseillaise 
is chorused in London thoroughfares, and London 
poets sing — triolets. The wise are not swift to pro- 
nounce this troubadour insouciance a mark of ef- 
feminacy and declining genius. A great dramatist 
makes Combeferre, jean Prouvaire, and their com- 
rades within the fated barricade, heroes all, while 
casting bullets and waiting for the struggle at dawn, 
sing — not battle -odes but love -songs. England's 



A POWER MUST IT MAINTAIN." 



483 



heroism and imagination are not to be judged by 
her verse at this moment. Whether the Mother of 
Nations is to be like Niobe, or long with loyal chil- 
dren to rise up and call her blessed, her poets in 
fit succession will enrich the noblest imaginative lit- 
erature of any race or tongue, though, peradventure, 
i( after some time be past." 



INDEX. 



INDEX. 



Ablett, Joseph, 68. 

Adams, Sarah Flower, 257, 278. 

Adonais, Shelley's, 99, 168, 396, 398. 

iEschylus, 204, 269. 

^Esthetic Movement, Recent, 41.6, 
463 ; Wilde, Rodd, etc., 467 ; Ken- 
sington-Stitch Verse, 477. 

Affectation, 262 et seq., 300. 

Affluence, of Landor's imagination, 
46 ; of the recent schools, 345. 

Agamemnon of ALschylus, Browning's, 
426. 

Aide, Hamilton, 470. 

Aird, Thomas, 255. 

Alcestis, of Euripides, 336. 

Alexander the Great, De Vere's, 242. 

Alexandrian Period, described and 
compared to the Victorian 
209, 430 ; Kingsley on, 208 ; 
see pp. 239, 276, 286. 

Alfieri, compared to Landor, 57. 

Alford, Henry, 242, 278. 

Allegory, Tennyson's love of, : 
borrowed from the Italian, 176. 
Home's Orioit, 249. 

Allingham, William, 92, 258, 444. 

Alliteration, Tennyson's, 179, 226; 
Swinburne's, 381. 

Amateurship, generally to be dis- 
trusted, 58, 59; Landor's, 59; 
Swinburne's, 410. 

Ambition, L. Morris's, 452. 

America, not understood by Landor, 
64 • history and song, 290, 291 ; re- 



202- 
and 



?6; 
i of 



flex influence on England, 291, 292; 
and see 389. 

American poets, their freshness and 
individuality, 290; American and 
British minor poets contrasted, 290, 
291 ; Swinburne's strictures upon^ 
402-404. 

Amcebean contests, in Theocritus and 
in Tennyson, 218, 219. 

Anacreon, 205, 226. 

Analysis, and synthesis, the servitors 
of Art, 197. 

Anapestic Verse, Browning's and 
Swinburne's, 325. 

Anderson, Alex., 470. 

" Andrea del Sarto," Browning's, 322. 

Andrea of Hungary, Landor's, 42. 

Andrews, S. P., his "Alwato" lan- 
guage, 466. 

Andromeda, Kingsley's, 43, 251. 

Angelo, Michael, 448. 

Anglicism, love of motherland, 469 \ 
recent lack of, 481 

Animals, Landor's love for, 61. 

" Annuals," The, 237. 

Anthologia Grczca, 204. 

Anthropomorphisnij 327. 

Antique, the ; Atalanta the best at- 
tempt to reproduce it, 386, 387 ; re- 
moved from popular sympathy, 386; 
and see Hellenics. 

Application, 412. 

Appreciation, Ruskin on, 298. 

Arabian Nights, 377. 



488 



INDEX. 



Architecture, and national style, 481. 

Ariosto, 11. 

Aristocracy in Art, law of, 53. 

Aristophanes' Apology, Browning's, 
338, 426. 

Arnold, Edwin, 270; The Light of 
Asia, etc., 449, 450. 

Arnold, Matthew, a poet of the closet, 
73 ; review of his genius and writ- 
ings, 90-100; his first volume, 90; 
contrasted with Hood, 90, 91 ; a 
poet of the intellect, 91 ; lyrical ex- 
cellence and defects, 92 ; his poetic 
theory, 92 ; his limitations, 93 ; ele- 
vated blank-verse, 93 ; Balder Dead, 
93; Sohrab and Rustum, 94; other 
poems and studies, 95 ; Preface ex- 
planatory of his own position, 95; 
his mental structure and attitude, 
96; subjective pieces, 96; exhibits 
reaction from over - culture, 97 ; 
Clough and Arnold, 98; "Thyr- 
sis," 98 ; his masterly prose-writ- 
ings, 99 ; final estimate of his stand- 
ing as a poet, 100 ; despondent atti- 
tude of Arnold and Palgrave, 247 ; 
quoted, 247 ; his citation of Goethe, 
341 ; revision of foregoing criticism, 
442 ; a leader of modern thought, 
id. ; his most ideal trait, ib. ; and 
see 5, 40, 167, 168, 251, 289, 348, 
386, 396, 401, 435, 460, 463. 

Art, spirit of antique, 10; Hebraic 
feeling, 10 ; mediaeval spirit, 10, 11 ; 
modern spirit, 11, 12; tendency to 
reflect its owrf time, 27 ; transient 
effect of novelty, 29; law of sym- 
pathy, 38 ; art as a means of sub- 
sistence, 58 ; defective art of Mrs. 
Browning, 126, 144, 146; complex 
modern art, shown by Tennyson, 
183, 186; refinement of the minor 
poets, 240 ; Ruskin on art as a means 



of expression, 288; Balzac on true 
mission of, 266; Blake on nature 
and imagination, 266 ; a wise meth- 
od necessary to art, 300 ; tyranny 
of forms, 300 ; Art the bride of the 
imagination, 304; universality of 
her domain, 403. 

Artisanship, not a substitute for Im- 
agination, 478. 

Art-School, evolution of, 4, 5 ; Ten- 
nyson its head, 159; and see 270, 

271, 347- 

Ashby-Sterry, Joseph, 471. 

Ashe, Thomas, 271. 

Aspiration, and attainment, 367 ; mo- 
dern restriction of, 458, 478. 

Atalanta in Calydon, Swinburne's, re- 
viewed, 386-389 ; as a reproduction 
of the antique, 387 ; choric verse, 
388 ; Greek dedication of, 398 ; and 
see 43, 271, 283, 392, 404, 405. 

Athenceum, London, Miss Barrett's 
contributions to, 123. 

Attic Period, 205. 

Aurora Leigh, Mrs. Browning's, re- 
flects her own experience, 117, 118; 
review of, 140-143; Landor's esti- 
mate of, 142 ; and see 146. 

Austin, Alfred, 450, 451. 

" Ave atque Vale," Swinburne's, 99 ; 
examined, 396-398 ; a lofty ode, 
and how it compares with other 
elegies, 396 ; metrical beauty, 397. 

Awkwardness, Browning's, 303. 

Aytoun, William Edmondstoune, 250^ 
251, 262 ; Fi7'7nilian, and B071 Glial- 
tier, 272 ; translations, 276. 



Bacon, 118. 
Baconian Method, 9. 
Bailey, Philip James, 263. 
I Baillie, Joanna, 120, 235. 



INDEX. 



489 



Balaustion's Adventure, Browning's, 

33 6 > 33 8 > 426. 

Balder, Dobell's, 267. 

Balder Dead, Arnold's, 55, 93. 

Balin and Balan, Tennyson's, 420. 

Ballad Romances, Home's, 249. 

Ballads and Other Poems, Tennyson's, 
420. 

Ballads, Hood's, 76; Kingsley's, 251 ; 
Buchanan's, 356 ; Rossetti's, 359, 
364; strength of Tennyson's later, 
420; Mrs. Pfeiffer's, 454; Gosse's 
" Cruise of the Rover," 460. 

Ballantine, James, 279. 

Balzac, on the true mission of Arf, 
266. 

Banim, John, 260. 

Barbaric Taste, Browning's, 339. 

Barham, Richard Harris, 238. 

Baring-Gould, Sabine, 278. 

Barlow, George, 453. 

Barnard, Lady Ann, 120. 

Barnes, William, 279, 440. 

Barons' Wars, Drayton's, 180. 

Barrett, Miss. See Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning. 

Barrett, Mr., father of Mrs. Browning, 
116; opposes his daughter's mar- 
riage, 132, 133. 

" Barry Cornwall." See B. W. Proc- 
ter. 

Barton, Bernard, 235. 

Baudelaire*, Charles, Swinburne's me- 
morial to, 168, 396-398; Les Fleurs 
du Mai, 396, 412. 

Bayley, Thomas Haynes, 258. 

Beauty, one of three kinds essential 
in art, 336. 

Beautiful, the, Morris an artist of, 
366 et sea. ; Keats devoted to, 367. 

Becket, Tennyson's, 419. 

Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, quoted, 20 ; 
and see 2, 47, 104, 191, 237, 249. 



Bells and Pomegranates, Browning's, 
310. 

Bennett, William Cox, 259. 

Bentley's Magazine, 255. 

Beranger, 3, 83, 339. 

Bevington, Louisa S., 457. 

Bickersteth, Edward Henry, 278, 452. 

Biography, in estimating an author's 
works, 54. 

Bion, Epitaph of, 201, 396. 

Bion, and Moschus, 99, 168, 201, 215, 
216, 221, 223, 225; and see Theocri- 
tus and Tennyson. 

" Bishop Blougram's Apology," 327, 

3 2 8 5 337- . 
Blackie, John Stuart, 275. 
Blackmore, R. D., 454. 
Blackwood's Magazine, 255. 
Blake, William, his idealism, 19 ; 

aphorisms of, 266 ; and see 353, 

362, 401. 
Blanchard, Laman, 441. 
Blank-Verse, a crucial test, 45 ; Lan- 

dor's, 45, 46; Tennyson's, 160-162; 

Elizabethan, 160 ; Miltonic, 160 ; 

idyllic, 212 ; Byron's and Swin- 
burne's, 437. 
" Blessed Damozel, The," 363. 
Blessington, Countess of, 38. 
Blind, Mathilde, 457. 
Blot in the y Scutcheon, Browning's, 

3H- 

Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen, 460. 

Boccaccio, 11, 372. 

Boileau, 393. 

Bonar, Horatius, 278. 

Book of Orm, Buchanan's, 352-354; 
transcendental, and lacking sim- 
plicity, but fine here and there, 353, 
354. " The Dream of the World 
without Death," and " The Vision 
of the Man Accurst," 354. 



49Q 



INDEX. 



Book of the Poets, Mrs. Browning's, 
240. 

Book-making, as an industry, 479. 

Books, and reading, effect upon the 
young imagination, 117. 

Bothie of Tober-na-Viwlich, Clough's, 
244. 

Bothwell, Aytoun's, 250. 

Both-well, Swinburne's, 290 ; reviewed, 
406-410; an epic in dramatic form, 
406, 407 ; notable passages, 407 ; ab- 
sence of mannerism, 408 ; extracts 
from, 408, 409 ; general character- 
istics, 410 ; and see 389, 394, 436. 

Bothwick, Jane, 278. 

Bowles, William Lisle, 235. 

Bowring, Sir John, 274. 

Boyd, Hugh Stuart, his friendship 
with Mrs. Browning, 119. 

" Boythorn," portrait of Landor, by 
Dickens, 57. 

Breeding, 272. 

" Bridge of Sighs," Hood's, 86 ; its 
purity and pathos, 87, 88. 

Bridges, Robert, Nero, and lyrical 
pieces, 462, 463. 

Broderip, Mrs., 88. 

Bronte, Charlotte, 120. 

Bronte Sisters, 253. 

Brown, Armitage, 37. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, 52. 

Browne, William, 232. 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 5, 30, 38 ; 
review of her life and writings, 114- 
149 ; her spiritual temperament, 
114 ; the greatest female poet, 115 ; 
unmarried life, 11 6-1 32 ; birth, 116; 
Essay on Mind, 116 ; early training, 
1 17-120; friendship with Hugh S. 
Boyd, 119 ; classical studies, 119, 
121 ; portrait by Miss Mitford, nc; 
general culture, 120 ; compared with 
other female writers, 120; her schol- 



arship not pedantic, 121 ; Prome- 
theus Bound, and Miscellaneous Po- 
ems, 121 ; Paraphrases on Theocri- 
tus, etc., 122; her classicism, 122; 
distinct from Landor's, 122 ; pro- 
longed illness and seclusion, 123; 
friendship with Mary Russell Mit- 
ford, 123 ; The Seraphim and other 
Poems, 123, 124; The Romaunt of the 
Page, 123 ; Essays on the Greek- 
Christian and English Poets, 123, 
124; first collective edition of her 
poems, 124; The Drama of Exile, 
124; reviewed, 127-129; character- 
istics as an English poet, 124-127; 
her early style, 124; disadvantages 
of over-culture, 124 ; compared to 
Shelley, 124 ; her ballads and minor 
lyrics, 124, 125; "Rhyme of the 
Duchess May," 125 ; her diction, 
126; lack of taste, 126; nobility of 
feeling, 126 ; defective art, 126 ; 
clouded vision, 127 ; transcenden- 
talism, 127 ; knowledge of Hebrew, 
127; minor lyrics, 129; humanita- 
rian poems, 129 ; " Lady Geraldine's 
Courtship," 130 ; end of her forma- 
tive career, 131 ; improving health, 
131 ; her meeting with Robert 
Browning, 131 ; courtship and mar- 
riage, 132; Mr. Barrett's opposition 
to the nuptials, 132, 133 ; complete 
womanhood, 133 ; her years of mar- 
ried life, 133-149; the wedded poets, 
136; summit of Mrs. Browning's 
greatness, 136; primary and benefi- 
cent influence of wedlock, 136; Son- 
nets from the Portuguese, 137, 138, 
439 ; compared with " In Memo- 
riam," 138 ; her devotion to Italy, 
138 ; Casa Guidi Windows, 136, 139; 
lines to her son, T39; revised edi- 
tion of her poems (1856), 140 ; de- 



INDEX. 



491 



lightful residence in Italy, 140 ; Au- 
rora Leigh, 136 ; reviewed, 140-142 ; 
Mrs. Browning's period of decline 
in health and creative power, 143, 
322 ; secondary influence of her 
married life, 143 ; Poems before Con- 
gress, 143; contributions to the In- 
dependent, 143 ; Last Poems, 144 ; 
final estimate of her genius, 144- 
149 ; her qualities as an artist, 144 ; 
contrasted with Tennyson, 144, 145 ; 
her over - possession, 145, incerti- 
tude, 145, spontaneity, 145, use of 
the refrain, 145, dangerous facility, 
146, lack of humor, 146, satirical 
power, 146, slight idyllic tendency, 
146 ; her sympathetic and religious 
nature, 147 ; her personal sweet- 
ness, 147 ; subjective quality of her 
writings, 147 ; represents her sex in 
the Victorian era, 148 ; her faith in 
inspiration, 148 ; her exaltation and 
rapture, 148, belief in the doctrines 
of Swedenborg, 148 ; her death, 
149; poetry addressed to her by 
her husband, 333 ; and see 198, 222, 
315, 320, 463. 
Browning, Robert, characteristics, 30 ; 
first acquaintance with Miss Bar- 
rett, 131 ; courtship and marriage, 
132 ; good and bad effects upon his 
wife's style, 136, 143, 144; imitated 
by Thornbury, 252 ; influence on 
minor poets, 265 ; Neo-Romantic 
influence, 281 ; review of his career 
and writings, 293-341 ; an original, 
unequal poet, 293, 338 ; birth, 293 ; 
three aspects of his genius, 293; 
analysis of his dramatic gift, 294- 
296 ; represents the new dramatic 
element, 294 ; not dramatic in the 
early sense of the term, 294, 295 ; 
his own personality visible in all his 



characters, 296 ; mannerism, 296 ; 
stage-plays not his best work, 296 ; 
his chief success in portrayal of sin- 
gle characters and moods, 296 ; his 
special mission, 297 ; the poet of 
psychology, 297 ; founder of a sub- 
dramatic school, 297 ; his style and 
method, 297-301 ; eccentricity, 297 ; 
impression left by his work, 300; 
the same, as stated by a clear think- 
er, 300 ; his defective and capricious 
expression, 301 ; style of his early 
and latest works, 301 ; his apparent 
theory, 301 ; vigorous early lyrics, 
302 ; the " Cavalier Tunes," stirrup- 
pieces, "Herve Riel," "The Pied 
Piper," etc., 302 ; his general style, 
303, 429 ; mutual influence of him- 
self and his wife, 303 ; the two poets 
compared, 303 ; his disregard of the 
fitness of things, 304 ; excessive de- 
tail, 304 ; irreverent to art, 304 ; 
crude realism, 304 ; at the London 
University, 305 ; goes to Italy, 305 ; 
Paracelsus, 305 - 308 ; recognition 
gained by it, 305 ; its garrulity, 306 ; 
fine thought and diction, 306-308; 
Strafford, 308, 309 ; intended as a 
stage-play, 308 ; enacted by Macrea- 
dy, 309; Sordello, 309,310; Bells 
and Pomegranates, 310-319; " Lu- 
ria," 310-312 ; the poet's favorite 
type of hero, 310 ; Landor's verses 
to Browning, 311 ; "The Return of 
the Druses," 312, 313 ; good dra- 
matic effects, 312 ; the author's clas- 
sicism, 313; his debt to Italy, 313; 
" King Victor and King Charles," 
313 ; three dramatic masterpieces, 
313; " Colombe's Birthday," 313, 
314; "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon," 
3145 a song resembling Mrs. Brown- 
ing's style, 315; " Pippa Passes," 



492 



INDEX. 



reviewed, quoted, with notice of its 
faults and beauties, 315-319; "A 
Soul's Tragedy," 319; the poet fore- 
goes strictly dramatic poetry, 319; 
dramatic nature of his lyrics, 320 ; 
originality in rejecting the idyllic 
method, 320 ; founder of the new 
life-school, 320 ; more realistic than 
imaginative, 321 ; his genius, 321 ; 
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 321 ; 
" My Last Duchess," 321 ; Men and 
Women, and Dra??iatis Personce, 
321-329 ; inferiority of the last- 
named volume, 322 ; excellence of 
the former, 322 ; thrilling dramatic 
studies, 322 ; mediaeval themes, 322 ; 
" Andrea del Sarto," " Fra Lippo 
Lippi," etc., 322, 323; facility of 
diction, 324 ; " Christmas Eve " and 
" Easter Day," 324 ; excellent me- 
diaeval church studies, 324, 352 ; 
their truth and subtilty, 324 ; " The 
Heretic's Tragedy/' etc., 325 ; stud- 
ies upon themes taken from the 
first century, 325, 326 ; " Cleon," 
"A Death in the Desert," etc., 326; 
defect of these pieces, 327 ; his sub- 
tilty of intellect, 327 ; " Caliban," 
" Bishop Blougram," etc., 327, 328 ; 
occasional lyrics, 328, imitated by 
younger poets, 328, their beauty, 
328, landscape, 328, and suggestive- 
ness, 329 ; moral of this poet's emo- 
tional and erotic verse, 329, 330 ; 
rationalistic freedom, 329 ; admired 
by those who reject Swinburne, 330 ; 
subjective undertone of his " Dra- 
matic Lyrics," 330 ; " In a Balcony," 
331 ; teaches respect for passional 
instincts, 332 ; " The Statue and the 
Bust," 332 ; perfect union with his 
wife, 333 ; poetry addressed to her, 



333> 335 ; fault Y quality of many 
lyrics, 334 ; The Ring and the Book, 
334 ~ 336 ; occasional likeness to 
Tennyson, 335 ; Balaustion's Adven- 
ture, 336 ; Fifine at the Fair, 336 ; 
tendency to prosaic work, t>Z7 ■> Red 
Cotton Night - Cap Country, 337 ; 
evils of an unwise method, 337 ; 
Aristophanes'' Apology, 338 ; final 
estimate of his genius, 338-341 ; un- 
conventional spirit of his verse, 
338 ; a true fellow-craftsman, 339 ; 
rich, yet barbaric, taste, 339 ; does 
not perfect his ideal, 339 ; results of 
his lawlessness, 340 ; feeling engen- 
dered by his recent work, 340 ; mi- 
nute dramatic insight, 340 ; is his 
the " poetry of the future " ? 341 ; 
opinions as to his ultimate rank as 
a poet, 341 ; his style and Swin- 
burne's compared, 382 ; his recent 
leadership, 416; longevity, 417 ; op- 
timism, 422, 433 ; The Inn Album, 
425 ; Pacchiarotto, 425 ; Agamem- 
non, 426 ; La Saisiaz, etc., 426 ; 
Dramatic Idyls, 426 ; Jocoseria, 

427 ; Ferishtah's Fancies, 427 ; Par- 
leyings, etc., 427 ; his use of Rhyme, 

428 ; increase of popularity, 429- 
431 ; the Browning Societies, 430, 
431 ; his introspective gift, 43 T ~433 5 
compared with Tennyson, and their 
differing relations to the Period, 
433 ; and see 38, 47, 57, 62, 167, 168, 
187, 249, 256, 257, 290, 291, 352, 384, 
386, 402, 413, 420, 421, 440, 441, 450, 
451, 465, 469, 476. 

Brownings, the two, 2 ; friendship with 
Landor, 38 ; effect on each other's 
style, 303 ; and see 333, 344. 

Browning and Rossetti, leaders of the 
new romantic school, 6. 



INDEX. 



493 



Bryant, William Cullen, translator of 
Homer, 276 ; pastorals, 349 ; and 
see American Poets. 

Buchanan, Robert, 264 ; his antago- 
nistic position, 345 ; birth, 346 ; po- 
etic temperament, 346 ; represents 
the Scottish element, 346 ; religious 
aspiration, 346; transcendentalism, 
347 ; library edition of his works, 
347 ; how far a pupil of Words- 
worth, and the Lake School, 347 ; 
inequality, 347 ; purpose and orig- 
inality, 348 ; lack of restraint, 348 ; 
Undertones, 348 ; classicism, 348 ; 
Idyls and Legejtds of Inverbum, 

■ 348-350 ; his fidelity to Nature, 349 ; 
pastoral verse, 349, 350 ; North- 
Coast poems, 350; London Poems, 
350, 351 ; " The Scairth o' Bartle," 
352 ; humorous verse, etc., 352 ; The 
Book of Orm, 352-354; its mysti- 
cism, faults, and beauties, 353, 354; 
Napoleon Fallen, 354; The Drama 
of Kings, 354 ; reformatory work, 
355 ; St. Abe, 355 ; White Rose and 
Red, 355 ; his prose writings, 355 ; 
stage-plays, 355 ; faults of judgment 
and style, 355, 356 ; " The Ballad 
of Judas Iscariot," 356; "Coruis- 
ken Sonnets," 356 ; estimate of his 
genius and prospects, 356; "The 
Lights of Leith," 445 ; as a play- 
wright, 446. 

Buddhism, 450. 

" Bugle-Song," Tennyson's, 102. 

Bulwers, the two, 268 ; and see Ed- 
ward, Lord Lytton, and Robert, Lord 
Lytton. 

Bunyan, 176. 

Burbidge, Thomas, 243. 

Burlesque, 272, 273. 

Burns, 3, 22, 40, 219, 240, 415. 

Byron, sentiment of his school, 4, 412 ; 



at Harrow, 103 ; contrasted with 
Tennyson, 196-198; their difference 
in method, perception, imagination, 
and subjectivity, 197, in influence, 
198 ; his dramas, 295, 296 ; his 
" Marino Faliero," and Swinburne's, 
437> 43 8 5 and see 22, 34, 39, 41, 57, 
74, 99, 104, 105, 107, 154, 189, 198, 
199, 203, 235, 237, 240, 312,366,381, 
39°> 3 QI >4H> 412,469. 

Caine, T. Hall, his volume on Ros- 
setti, 439 ; and see 465. 

Call, Wathen M. W., 457. 

Callimachus, a saying of, 377. 

Calverley, Charles Stuart, his Fly- 
Leaves, 273 ; Translation of The- 
ocritus, 224, 275 ; and see 440. 

Calvinism, 329. 

Campanella, 448. 

Campbell, Thomas, 198, 235. 

Canning, George, 238. 

Caprice, hurtful to Expression, 301. 

Cary, Henry Francis, 235. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 37, 257 ; on Ster- 
ling, 243 ; Sartor Resartns, 310. 

" Carroll, Lewis." See C. L. Dodgson. 

Casa Guidi Windows, Mrs. Brown- 
ing's, 136; reviewed, 139. 

Caswall, Edward, 277. 

Catullus, 60, 69, 224, 226, 273. 

" Cavalier Tunes," Browning's, 302. 

Cayley, Charles Bagot (d. 1883), 472. 

Cenci, The, Landor's, 69. 

Cenci, The, Shelley's, 41. 

Cenhtry of Roundels, A, Swinburne's, 
436- 

Chandler, John, 277. 

Chapman, George, 122, 274, 401. 

Charicles, Becker's, 52. 

Charitable Dowager, Landor's, 41. 

Chartist Verse, 26a, 262. 

Chastelard, Swinburne's, 386, 389 ; re- 



494 



INDEX. 



viewed, 404-406 ; a romantic histori- 
cal drama, 404; its ideal of Mary 
Stuart, 405 ; a strongly emotional 
play, 405 ; and see 436, 466. 

Chaucer, 28, 381, 435 ; the master of 
Morris, 370 et seq. 

Chaucerian metres, heroic, sestina, 
and octosyllabic, 372, 373. 

Chaucerian Period, 209. 

Choric Verse, in Atalanta, 387, 388. 

" Christmas Eve," Browning's, 324. 

Church Studies, Browning's, 324,325. 

Cicero, upon Death, 152. 

Citation of Shakespeare, Landor's, 

5 1 - 

City of Dreadful Night, The, Thom- 
son's, 455, 456. 

Clare, John, 235. 

Clarke, Herbert E., 457. 

Classical Studies, Mrs. Browning's, 
1 18-120. 

Classicism, in poetry, 4 ; Landor's, 
43, 62 ; must be liberal, not pedan- 
tic, 121 ; Tennyson's, 225, 226; con- 
trasted with the Gothic method, 
313; the unities, 313; Italian clas- 
sicism, 313; Browning's, 336, 338; 
Buchanan's, 348 ; in Swinburne's 
early poems, 393 ; Symonds's, 448 ; 
Anglo-classicism, 463 ; pseudo-clas- 
sicism, 467; Lang's, 475; and see 
Atalanta, Keats, Shelley, The An- 
tique, University School, etc. 

Climacterics in art-life, 164. 

Closet-Drama, The, 296. 

Clough, Arthur Hugh, Arnold's 
" Scholar Gypsy," 98 ; life and 
work, 243, 244; compared to Ster- 
ling, 243 ; his hexameter poem, 
344 ; and see 396. 

Cockney School, 103. 

Coleridge, Hartley, 241, 243. 

Coleridge, S. T., his definition of 



Poetry, 9 ; and see 34, 36, 37, 74, 99, 
180, 203, 235,382,401,415. 

Collins, Mortimer, 441. 

Collins, William, 22, 66, 361, 382. 

Colombe's Birthday, Browning's, 311, 

3*3> 3H- 

Colonial Poetry, 468-470. 

Color, 362 ; Browning's sense of, 339. 

Comic Annual, Hood's, 78, 82, 89. 

Comic Poetry, a misnomer, jS. 

Composers, musical: Byrd, Wilbye, 
and Weelkes, 102. 

Composite School, otherwise the Idyl- 
lic, 5 ; Tennyson its master, 5 ; now 
universal, 477; and see 204, 219, 
271, 342, 413. 

Comrades in Art, the Rossetti group, 

357- 

Conscientiousness in Art, defective in 
Mrs. Browning, 145 ; Rossetti's, 361 ; 
Swinburne's in Both-well, 406. 

Conservatism, Tennyson's, 192, 423. 

Construction, 286; its relations to 
Decoration, 289. 

Contemplative Poets. See Meditative 
School. 

Conies Drolatiques, Balzac's, 324. 

Conventionalism, Browning's disre- 
gard of, 333, 338. 

Conviction, Poetry of, 254, 261, 264, 

457- 
Cook, Eliza, 259. 
Cooper, Thomas, 261. 
Coruisken Sonnets, Buchanan's, 356. 
Cotton, Percy, 441. 
Counterparts, Literary, 203, 211 ; and 

see throughout Chapter VI. 
Count Julian, Landor's, 41. 
Courthope, W. J., 471. 
Court Verse, 473. See Society Verse. 
Cowper, 22, 40, 58 ; his blank-verse, 

161, 
Cox, Frances Elizabeth, 278. 



INDEX. 



495 



Crabbe, 162. 

Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock, 254. 

Cranch, Christopher Pearse, 275. 

Crayon Verse. See Painting. 

Creative Faculty, wanting in certain 
ambitious poets, 477. 

Criticism, its province, 4; Landor's 
powers of, 64 ; comparative, its use 
and abuse, 72; Arnold's, 99; poets 
as critics of poetry, 99 ; Tennyson 
and his critics, 151— 153 ; verbal, 
239; defects of recent, 286; Swin- 
burne and his critics, 390, 391 ; 
Swinburne's critical genius and es- 
says, 401-404, 438 ; duty of the crit- 
ic, 411, 414; Austin's Poetry of the 
Period, 450; as an industry, 479; 
and see 480. 

Croly, George, 235. 

Cromwellian Period, 28, 115. 

Cross, Mrs. See M. E. Lewes. 

Cruikshank, George, 85. 

" Cults," Shelley, Browning, etc., 430, 
431 ; Art for beauty's sake, 477. 

Culture, effect upon spontaneity, 3 ; 
on creative art, 23, 406 ; the recent 
period of, 23 ; over-restraint, 24 ; 
breeding, 24 ; school of culture, 90 ; 
good effect in case of Mrs. Brown- 
ing, 120; over-training, 248; criti- 
cism and scholarship, 343 ; poetry 
for cultured people, 398 ; Symonds, 
447 ; Miss Robinson, 463 ; Lang, 
47 5 ; and see Over-culture, Univer- 
sity School, etc. 

Cunningham, Allan, 235. 

" Cup, The," Tennyson's, 418. 

"Cyclops," imitated by Tennyson, 
228. 



Dante, ii, 51, 170, 276, 375; Ros- 
setti's translations, 360. 



Darley, George, 2, 47, 191, 236, 249; 
his melody, 365. 

Darwin, Charles, 20. 

Davis, Thomas, 260. 

Dawson, W. J., 465. 

Death of Marlowe, Home's, 248. 

Death's Jest-Book, Beddoes', 237. 

Debonair Poets. See Society Verse. 

Decoration, and Construction, 286, 
289. 

Decorative Verse, 467. 

Defence of Guenevere, Morris's, 367, 
368, 370. 

Democracy, in Great Britain, 423. 

Democratic Poets, 260 ; often of aris- 
tocratic birth, 400. 

De Musset, Alfred, compared with 
Tennyson, 195. 

De Quincey, Thomas, his estimate of 
Landor, 63, 67 ; style, 401. 

Derby, Edward, Lord, 275. 

Descriptive Faculty and Verse, Ten- 
nyson's, 188; Hamerton's, 246; 
Browning's, 307 ; Buchanan's, 349 ; 
Morris's, 368, 369; Munby's, 454; 
Gosse's English landscape, 459 ; and 
see Nature, Scenic Tendency, etc. 

Design, Arts of, 368. 

De Vere, Aubrey Thomas, 242, 444. 

Dialect- Verse, Tennyson's, 181, 420; 
miscellaneous, 279, 470. 

Dickens, 38 ; portrait of Landor, 57 ; 
compared to Hood, 84-86. 

Diction, Hood's, 88 ; Tennyson's, 
179; Miss Barrett's, 126; Mrs. 
Lewes', 254; of Paracelsus, 306; 
Rossetti's revival of old English, 
361 ; Morris's and Swinburne's, 379, 
381 ; Wells's old English, 441 ; " Mi- 
chael Field's," 462. 

Didacticism, 4, 242, 413. 

Dilettanteism, 59, 290; Goethe and 
Arnold upon, 96. 



49 6 



INDEX. 



Discords, certain effects of, 383. 

Disraeli, Isaac, 51. 

Dithyrambic Verse, and quality, 381, 
388. 

Dixon, Richard Watson, 463. 

Dobell, Sydney, 267, 328. 

Dobson, Austin, 273, 473, 474; Prov- 
erbs in Porcelain, 473 ; Old World 
Idyls, and At the Sign of the Lyre, 
474 ; influence in England and 
America, 474 ; and see 441, 466, 
476. 

Dodgson, C. L., 471. 

Domett, Alfred, his Blackwood Lyrics, 
256; Browning's characterization 
of, 256; Ranolf and Amohia, 257; 
Flotsam and Jetsam, 445. 

Don Juan, Byron's, 141. 

Dore, Les Contes Drdlatiques, 324. 

Dorothy, Munby's, 454. 

Dowden, Edward, 465. 

Downing, Mary, 259. 

Doyle, Sir Francis Hastings, 253. 

Drama of Exile, Mass Barrett's, 124, 
127-129. 

Dra?na of Kings, Buchanan's, 347, 

354- 
" Dramatic Fragments," Procter's, 

"3- 

Dramatic Idyls, Browning's, 426. 

Dramatic Periods : The early drama, 
294, 295 ; Queen Anne's time, 295 ; 
the recent aspect, 294-296. 

Dramatic Poetry, and Poets : Landor's 
dramatic genius and verse, 41, 42, 
47, 48; Procter's, 106, 107; lyrical 
interludes in dramatic verse, 109, — 
their relation, 109 ; Procter a dra- 
matic song-writer, 109 ; Tennyson's 
genius not essentially dramatic, 189- 
191 ; this opinion confirmed by 
Queen Mary, 413; Bulwer's plays, 
255; Browning chief of the recent 



school, 294; his dramatic genius, 
294; Procter's definition of the 
dramatic faculty, 294 ; the true his- 
toric era, 294; Byron's dramas, 
296; Browning's dramatic lyrics, 
296, 320 et sea. ; dramatic effects 
in The Return of the Druses, 312; 
subjective moral of Browning's lyr- 
ics, 330 ; his minute insight, 340 ; 
Rossetti's dramatic gift, 365 ; con- 
stituents of great dramatic verse, 
413; Swinburne's Chastelard and 
Bothwell, 404 - 410 ; Tennyson's 
later dramas, 418, 419 ; personal 
study of Life required, 419; Brown- 
ing's dramatic psychology, 431- 
433 ; Swinburne's Mary Stuart, 436, 
Marino Faliero, 437 ; " Michael 
Field," 461 ; recent poetic drama, 
471, 472; Merivale, 471; "Ross 
Neil," 472 ; Wills, 472 ; Gilbert, 
ib. ; and see R. H. Home, W. 
Marston, A. Webster, J. L. Warren, 
A. Austin, Mrs. Singleton, R. 
Bridges, etc. 

Dramatic Psychology, 431-433. 

" Dramatic Romances and Lyrics," 
Browning's, 321. 

Dramatic Scenes, Procter's, preface 
to, 103 ; reviewed, 105. 

Dramatic School, New, 5, 6, 31 ; out- 
look in America, 291 ; need of a re- 
vival, 344. 

Dramatis Persona, Browning's, 304 ; 
reviewed, 321-329; inferior to Men 
and Women, 322 ; faulty lyrics, 334. 

Drayton, 180. 

" Dream of Eugene Aram," Hood's, 
84, 86. 

Drury Lane Theatre, 314. 

Dryden, 185, 232, 275. 

Dry Sticks Fagoted, Landor's, 70. 

Du Bellay, 474. 



I 



INDEX. 



497 



Dublin Newspaper Press, 260. 
Dublin University Magazine, 255. 
Dufferin, Lady, 260. 
Duffy, Charles Gavan, 260. 
Dunciad, The, 186. 
Diirer, Albert, 362, 456. 
Dutt, Toru. 

Early Italian Poets, translations 
by Rossetti, 276, 360. 

Early promise, men of, 256. 

Earnestness, Rossetti's, 362. 

Earthly Paradise, Morris's, reviewed, 
372-378 ; epic rather than dramatic, 
372; a treasury of historic myths 
and legends, 372; its fascination, 
37 2 > 377 ; Chaucerian verse, 372, 
373 ; clear expression, 374; a virtu- 
oso's poem, 374 ; enormous length, 
375. 377; harmonic plan, 375; 
moral, 375-377- 

Ease of Circumstances favorable to 
art, in Tennyson's case, 199 ; effect 
on Swinburne, 410. 

" Easter-Day," Browning's, 324. 

Eccentricity not a proof of genius, 
297. 

Ecole Intermediaire, the recent, 474. 

Edmeston, James, 277. 

Elegance, Poetic, Landor's, 44, 45. 

Elegiac Measure, Munby's, 454, 455. 

Elegiac Verse, Linton's " Threnody," 
271; Swinburne's, 435; and see 
Adonais, Ave atque Vale, Epitaph 
of Bion, Lycidas, Thyrsis, etc. 

" Eliot, George." See M. E. Lewes. 

Elizabethan Period, 11, 28, no, 115, 
209, 248, 416 ; its dramatic style, 
47, 413 ; songs and lyrics, 102, 104; 
allegory, 176; Mrs. Browning on, 
240 ; style caught by Swinburne in 
his early dramas, 384, 385; "Mi- 
chael Field's " style, 462. 



Elliott, Charlotte, 278. 

Elliott, Ebenezer, 83, 235. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 37, 112, 179; 
Essay on " The Poet," 27 ; on tra- 
dition and invention, 164; on imi- 
tation and originality, 232 ; his 
method, 301 ; and see 417, 442, 447, 
457, and American Poets. 

Emotion, new school of, 297 ; in 
Browning's verse, 329 ; a source of 
strength, 333. 

Eitglish Idyls, Tennyson's, 162 ; how 
far modelled on Theocritus, 217- 
219. 

English landscape, etc. See Descrip 
tive Faculty. 

English Language, adapted for trans- 
lation of the Greek, 275. 

English Songs, — Procter's, 109 ; re- 
viewed, 109-113; their virile qual- 
ity, in; convivial, 1 1 1 ; delicacy 
and pathos, 112 ; great variety, 112. 

Enoch Arden, Tennyson's, 177, 181, 
189. 

Epic of Hades, The, L. Morris's, 452. 

Erectheus, Swinburne's, 434. 

Erotic Verse, Swinburne's, 395. . 

Esoteric Quality, 463. 

Essay on Mind, Miss Barrett's, 116. 

Euripides, 348 ; translated by Brown- 
ing. 336, 33 8 - 

Evans, Sebastian, 282. 

Eve of St. Agnes, Keats's, 341, 367. 

Excess, Swinburne's, 392, 395, 439. 

Excursion, Wordsworth's, imitated 
by Alford, 242. 

Execution, 383. 

Expression, the aim of recent poetry, 
13 ; of Tennyson's early works, 
1 56 ; greater than invention among 
the minor poets, 287 ; the poet's 
special office, 298 ; the flower of 
thought, 301 ; brilliant quality of 



493 



INDEX. 



Swinburne's, 379 ; carried to ex- 
cess by him, 382, 383. 
Extravagance, 66 ; of fantasy in Hood, 
85; Swinburne's, 392. 

Faber, Frederick William, 278. 

Facility, 146; injurious to Browning, 
324; Morris's, 377; Symonds's, 
447-449 ; E. Arnold, 449 ; L. Morris, 
451-453 ; Smith and others, 453, 454. 

Faery Queene, The, 180. 

"Fair Ines," Hood's ballad, 76. 

" Falcon, The," Tennyson's, 418. 

Fame, Landor's, 66 ; sudden increase 
of Browning's, 429. 

Fancy, 80, 272, 273, 471. 

Fantastic Verse, 285. 

" Farringford School." See Idyllic 
Poetry. 

Fashion in thought and art, passing 
vogues, 450, 476. 

Fatalism, of Morris's poetry, 375, 
2,77 ; its adverse effect, 377 ; of 
Swinburne's Atalanta, 387. 

" Father Prout." See Francis Ma- 
honey. 

Faust, compared with Paracelsus, 305. 

Fazio, Milman's, 236. 

Feeling, high quality of Mrs. Brown- 
ing's, 126. 

Fellow-craftsmanship, Browning on, 

339- 
Female Poets, 120, 254, 279-281 ; their 

independence and emotion, 279. 
Ferishtah^s Fancies, Browning's, 427. 
Festus, Bailey's, 263. 
Field, Kate, her portrait of Landor, 

in The Atlantic Monthly, 70. 
" Field, Michael," Callirhoe, Brutus 

Ultor; etc., 461, 462 ; diction and 

dramatic quality, 462. 
Fifine at the Fair, Browning's, 336- 

337, 340. 



Figure-School. See Life School. 
Findlater, Eric Bothwick, 278. 
" Finola" (Mrs. Varian), 260. 
Firmilian, Aytoun's, 262, 285. 
First-Century Studies, Browning's, 

325, 3 2 6- 
Fiske, John, 372. 
Fitness of Things, Tennyson's sense 

of, 187 ; Browning's disregard of, 

3°4- 

FitzGerald, Edward, 276, 398, 440. 

Fitz-Gerald, Maurice Purcell, 275. 

Fletcher, John, 11, 102, 236, 294. 

Fletcher of Saltoun, his famous say- 
ing, 260. 

" Flower, The," Tennyson's, 152, 212. 

Fly-Leaves, Calverley's, 273. 

Foote, Miss, the actress, 107. 

Form, Browning's lack of, 339. 

Forster, John, biographer of Landor, 
37 ; upon Gebir, 40 ; and see 49, 
57, 60, 69. 

Fourier, Charles, theory of the pas- 
sions, 56; his famous apothegm, 
329 ; and see 430. 

Fox, W. J., 257. 

Franco-Sapphic School, 396. 

Fra Rupert, Landor's, 42. 

Fraser's Magazine, 255. 

Fraser-Tytler. See C. C. Liddell. 

Freedom, Browning's ideal of, 308 ; 
limits of, in Art, 339 ; radicalism of 
Swinburne's, 392. 

French Forms, Gosse's poetry in, 459 ; 
Dobson's, 474 ; Lang's Ballades, 
etc., 475; vogue in England and 
America, 476, 477. 

French Influence, upon Swinburna. 

• 3 8 4, 393- 

French School, 380. 
Frere, John Hookham, 235, 274. 
Fuller, Margaret, 62. 



INDEX. 



499 



Garibaldi, 64, 400. 

Garnett, Richard, 444. 

Garrulity, Browning's, 306, 324. 

Gautier, Theophile, Memorial to, 398. 

Gay, John, 232. 

Gebir, Landor's, 39, 40, 68. 

Gebirus, Latin version of the forego- 
ing, 41- 

Genius, its independence, 1 ; needs 
appreciation, 68 ; unconscious train- 
ing of, 118; certain men of, un- 
suited to their period, 236, 249 ; pe- 
culiarity of Browning's, 293, 432- 
434 ; distinguished from talent, 321 ; 
Rossetti a man of, 359; genius to 
be judged at its best, 411 ; freedom 
of, 412; vitality of works of, 441; 
J. Thomson's, 455. 

Gentleman 's Magazine, 48. 

" George Eliot." See Marian Evans 
Lewes. 

Georgian Period, 34, 115; contrasted 
with the Victorian, 196; revival of 
poetry in, 240, 241 ; sentiment and 
passion of, 412; and see 464, 481, 
Byron, Keats, Scott, Shelley, etc. 

Gesta Romanorum, 372. 

Gifford, William, 286. 

Gilbert, W. S., Original Plays, etc., 
472. 

Gilfillan, Robert, 259. 

Giovanna of Naples, Landor's, 42. 

" Godiva," compared to " Hylas," 211, 
213. 

Goethe, quoted, 20 ; on dilettanteism, 
96, 341 ; English translators of, 276 ; 
on distinction between the artist 
and the amateur, 289; and see yj, 
99, 192. 

Goldsmith, 22, 66. 

Gordon, A. Lindsay, 469. 

Gosse, Edmund, 458-460, 470 ; admi- 
rable prose, 458 ; poetical works — 



On Viol and Flute, King Erik, New 
Foems, Firdausi in Exile, 459 ; char- 
acteristics, 460. 
Gothic Methods and Studies, 313, 

39 2 - 

" Grand Manner, The," 93. 

Gray, David, 245, 264, 265 ; friend- 
ship with Buchanan, 348. 

Gray, Thomas, 40, 66, 382. 

Great Britain, a crisis imminent, 482. 

Greatness in Art, how constituted, 

34i- 

Greece, spirit of her idealism, 10; 
rise and decline of her poetry, 238, 
239 ; England compared to, 239. 

Greek-Christian Poets, read and anno- 
tated by Mrs. Browning, 120, 123. 

Greek Idyls, 201-233. See Tennyson 
and Theocritus ; also, Bion and 
Moschus. 

Greek and Latin Verses, Landor's, 
43, 62 ; Swinburne's, 398, 399 ; the 
latter's statement of their value to 
the maker, 399. 

Griffin, Gerald, 260. 

" Guenevere," Tennyson's, 177, 178. 

Guido, his " Aurora," 9, 10. 

Hake, Thomas Gordon, 282, 444. 
Hallam, Arthur Henry, 237, 243. 
Hamerton, Philip Gilbert, 246, 368. 
Hamilton, Janet, 279. 
Hannibal, Prof. Nichol's, 255. 
Hardy, Thomas, 454. 
Hare, the brothers Francis and Juli- 
us, 37. 
Harold, Tennyson's, 419. 
Harte, F. Bret, 469. 
" Haunted House," Hood's, 84. 
Hawker, Robert Stephen, 440. 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 366. 
Hawtrey, Edward Craven, 275.J 
Hazlitt, William, yj- 



50o 



INDEX. 



Hebraism, Browning's, 325 ; Swin- 
burne's, 387, 393. 

Hebrew language, Miss Barrett's 
study of, 127. 

Hemans, Mrs., 120, 237. 

Heine, his idealism, 18 ; the Reisebil- 
der, 356; and see 92, 113, 455, 
468. 

Hellenics, Landor's, 39, 42-45. 

Herbert, George, 28, 283. 

Herder, a saying of Jean Paul, 147. 

Heroic Idyls, Landor's, 70. 

Herrick, Robert, 76. 

Hervey, Thomas Kibble, 256. 

Hesiod, 205. 

Hexameter Verse, the Pastoral or 
Bucolic, 211, 227; Clough's, 244; 
Kingsley's and Hawtrey's, 251. 

Heywood, Thomas, 102. 

Hillard, George S., 143. 

Hillard, Kate, 104. 

Hogarth, his method in Art, 351. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 273. 

Home, J. Wyville, 465. 

Homer, method of, 9, 178 ; Arnold 
on translating, 99 ; Tennyson as a 
translator of, 182; his simplicity, 
267; English translations of, 275; 
imitated by Morris, 370; and see 
i5i, 204, 205, 215, 472. 

Homer, Winslow, 454. 

Hood's Magazine, 82, 86. 

Hood, Thomas, review of his life and 
writings, 72-90; the poet of sympa- 
thy, 72 ; of the crowd, 73 ; his birth, 
73; character and genius, 73, 74; 
early life, 74 ; youthful career as a 
writer, 74, 75 ; early poems in the 
manner of Spenser, 75; their beau- 
ties and defects, 75; his exquisite 
lyrical ballads, imaginative odes, 
etc., 76 ; these more truly poetical 
than work of the verbal school, 76 ; 



his humor, 77 ; Odes and Addresses, 
Whims and Oddities, london Mag- 
azine, etc., 77 ; a jester by profes- 
sion, 77; Hood's Own, and the 
Comic Anmcals, 78; his poorer 
verse and prose, 78 ; " Ode to Rae 
Wilson," 78 ; Miss Kilmansegg, 79, 
80; a sustained, powerful, and 
unique satire, ibid. ; Thackeray and 
Hood, 80; detrimental effect of 
poverty upon his work, 81 ; a jour- 
nalist-poet, 82 ; London's poet, 
83 ; his understanding of the poor, 
83 ; Hood and Dickens, 84-86 ; 
similarity of their methods, 84; 
alike in melodramatic work, extrav- 
agance, humane feeling, 85, 86; 
"Dream of Eugene Aram," 86; 
" Song of the Shirt," 86, 87 ; " Bridge 
of Sighs," 87, 88 ; general characteris- 
tics, 88 ; Mrs. Broderip's Memorials, 
88 ; his wife, 89 ; his closing hours, 
89; sympathy of the English peo- 
ple, 89; his death, 90; monument 
to his memory, 90; and see 5, 26, 
56, 91, 92, 103, 180, 199, 236, 238, 
272. 

Horace, 200, 204, 273 ; English trans- 
lations of, 274, 472 ; and see 473. 

Home, Richard Hengist, 2, 130; gen- 
ius and works, 248-250 ; dramas, 
248 ; temperament, 249 ; Orion, 249 ; 
Ballad Romances, 249 ; unsuited to 
his period, 249 ; his death, 439 ; 
laura Dibalzo, 440. 

Houghton, Lord. See Milnes. 

House of life, Rossetti's, 366. 

Howells, William Dean, 251. 

Howitt, William and Mary, 259. 

Hugo Victor, 165, 393, 400, 401, 424, 
435 ; les Miserables, 482. 

Human Tragedy, The, Austin's, 451. 

Humor, Hood's, 73, 74, 77; deficient 



INDEX. 



50I 



in Mrs. Browning, 146 ; Tennyson's, 
163; Buchanan's, 352; Swinburne's 
lack of, 395; W. S. Gilbert, 472. 

Hunt, Holman, 358. 

Hunt, Leigh, his poetic mission, 103 ; 
estimate of his quality and life, 103, 
104; Hunt and Procter, 104; and 
see 37, 51, 75, 106, 236, 257, 274, 
411, 412, 460, 477. 

Huxley, T. H, strictures on Expres- 
sion, 13, 26. 

" Hylas," compared with " Godiva," 
21 1-2 1 3 ; and see 398. 

Hymnology, recent, 277, 278 ; its char- 
acteristics, 277 ; early and later 
composers, 277 ; translations of 
the Latin and German hymns, 277, 
278. 

Hyperion, Keats's, 40, 161, 249, 397. 

Icelandic Translations, by Mor- 
ris and Magniisson, 371. 

Iconoclasm, scientific, 7 ; the poet not 
an iconoclast, 300. 

Ideal, how conceived and perfected, 

339- 

Ideality, poetic, 18 ; restrictions to, 
23 ; Landor's, 46 ; of Morris and 
Keats, 367 ; Gilbert's Plays, 472. 

Idyllia Heroica, Landor's, 43. 

Idyllic Period, Dialect-verse a mark 
of, 279. 

Idyllic Poetry and School, 2, 4 ; qual- 
ities of the school, 5 ; Landor's idyl- 
lic verse, 44 ; Mrs. Browning's lack 
of idyllic quality, 146 ; method of 
Tennyson, 159, 187 ; the recent 
school, how far modelled upon the 
Alexandrian, see Tennyson and 
Theocritus, 201-233 ; the true idyl, 
233, 269; minor idyllic poets, 269- 
271 ; their strength and weakness, 
269 ; mission of the idyllists near- 



ly ended, 342 ; the " Farringford 
School," 345 ; Munby's Dorothy, 
454 ; and see 320, 413. 

Idyls and legends of Inverbum, Bu- 
chanan's, 348-350 ; compared with 
Wordsworth's and Tennyson's idyls, 
348; their truth to nature, 349,350. 

Idyls of the King, Tennyson's, 94: 
reviewed, 175-180 ; an epic of ideal 
chivalry, 175 ; based on Malory's 
romance, 176; allegorical tendency, 
176; grown from a series of idyls 
to an epic, 177 ; its early and later 
blank -verse, 177; " Morte d'Ar- 
thur," and the four succeeding idyls, 
177, 178 ; " Gareth and Lynette," 
179; the style and diction of this 
poem, 179; the subject, 180; dedi- 
cation, 187 ; " Balin and Balan," 
420; and see 220, 371, 419, 425. 

Imaginary Conversations, Landor's, 
5°> 59> 63, 68, 70. 

Imagination, its action in youth, 117 ; 
Miss Barrett's, 128; recent stimu- 
lants to, 343; Rossetti's, 363, 365; 
placid, in Morris, 373, 374, 378 ; 
Swinburne's, 397, 411; recent sub- 
stitutes for, 479 ; modern deficiency 
of, 482. 

Imitation, literary, — the culling pro- 
cess, 215 ; " Owen Meredith's," 269; 
and see 290. 

Importance, law of, in Art, 48. 

" In a Balcony," Browning's, 306, 331. 

Incertitude, Mrs. Browning's, 145. 

Independent, The, 143. 

Independent Singers, among minor 
poets, 248-253. 

Individuality, Meredith's, 447. 

Inequality, 293, 338. 

Ingelow, Jean, 26, 280, 440. 

Ingoldsby legends, Barham's, 238. 

Ingram, John Kells, 260. 



502 



INDEX. 



In Memoriam, Tennyson's, compared 
with Mrs. Browning's sonnets, 138 ; 
reviewed, 168-172; the greatest of 
elegies, 168 ; its form and arrange- 
ment, 169; a national poem, 169; 
rhythm, 169 ; incorrect estimates of, 
170 ; faith and doubt, 170 ; use of 
scientific material, 170 ; its wisdom 
and grief, 171 ; general quality, 171 ; 
admired by authors, 171 ; landscape, 
188 ; and see 180, 193, 341, 425. 

Inn Albtcm, The, Browning's, 425. 

Inspiration, Mrs. Browning's faith in, 
148 ; lacking in the most prolific 
new poets, 477. 

Intellectuality, Landor's, 33; of Ar- 
nold's verse, 91 ; Tennyson's, 167 ; 
too marked in Pippa Passes, 318; 
" Caliban," 327 ; favorable to lon- 
gevity, 417. 

Introspective Poetry, 432. 

Invention, demand for, 478. 

Inversions, 361. 

" Inverury Poet," 261. 

Ion, Talfourd's, 236, 296. 

Ireland, 482. 

Irish Minstrelsy, 259, 260. 

Irreverence to Art, 304. 

Irving, Henry, and Tennyson's dra- 
mas, 418 ; and see 466. 

Isabella, Keats's, 367. 

Isles of loch Axve, Hamerton's, 246. 

Isometric Songs, in The Princess, 166; 
nature of their mode, 218 ; popu- 
larized by Tennyson, 218. 

Italian Period, and Influence, 11 ; al- 
legory, 176 ; Browning's studies, 
305, 313 ; debt of English litera- 
ture to, 313; effect upon Rossetti, 
360, 378, — upon Symonds, 448, — 
Gosse, 460, — Miss Robinson, 464 ; 
rispetti and stornelli, 464, 468 ; and 
see 461. 



Italy, Mrs. Browning's devotion to, 
138. 

"Jacobite Ballads," Thornbury's, 
252. 

Jeffrey, Francis, Lord, 286. 

Jocoseria, Browning's, 427. 

Jones, Ebenezer, 261. 

Jones, Ernest, 263. 

Jonson, Ben, 76, 102, 236, 406. 

Journalism, as a calling, injurious to 
a poet, 81 ; Hood a journalist-poet, 
82 ; instance of an editor, 82 ; the 
newspaper age, 343, 479 ; L. Blan- 
ch ard, 441. 

Keats, his ideality, 18 ; how far a 
progenitor of the Victorian School, 
104, 105 ; influence on Tennyson, 
155 ; Morris compared to, 367 ; and 
see 4, 5, 26, 31, 35, 40, 74, 103, 104, 
106, 121, 154, 157, 161, 167, 180,199, 
209, 236, 240, 245, 299, 305, 320, 348, 
361, 380, 382, 396, 412, 460, 467, 476, 

477- 

Keble, John, 237. 

Keegan, John, 260. 

Kemble, Charles, 107. 

Kenyon, John, 140. 

Kensal Green Cemetery, 83. 

Kensington - Stitch Verse. See Soci- 
ety Verse. 

King Arthur, Bulwer's, 255. 

King, Harriet E. Hamilton, 454. 

Kingsley, Charles, 26, 43, 92, 262 ; 
upon Theocritus, 208 ; his poetic 
works and genius, 251 ; and see 460. 

King Victor and King Charles, Brown- 
ing's, 310, 313. 

Knowles, James Sheridan, 236, 419. 

Knox, John, Swinburne's character!? 
zation, 404, 407-409. 

Knox, Isa Craig, 280. 

Kossuth, 62, 126. 



INDEX. 



503 



"Lady Geraldine's Courtship," 
Mrs. Browning's, 130, 315. 

La Farge, John, 362. 

La Fontaine, 61. 

Lake School, 242, 347, 390, 412. 

Lamb, Charles, 37, 51, 103. 

Lancashire Songs, Waugh's, 279. 

Landon, Miss, 120, 237. 

Landor, Robert, 57. 

Landor, Walter Savage, illustrating 
growth of the art-school, 5 ; quoted, 
1 5 ; review of life and writings, 33— 
81 ; a pioneer of the Victorian 
School, 33 ; birth, 34 ; prolonged 
career, 34; retention of power, 34- 
36 ; sustained equality, 36 ; univer- 
sality, 36 ; prose and poetry, if] ; de- 
ficient in sympathy, ^j ; friends, 37, 
38 ; early rhymed productions, 39 ; 
Poems, English and Latin, 39 ; a 
Moral Epistle, 39 ; Gebir, 40 ; mis- 
cellaneous pieces, 41 ; dramatic gen- 
ius and work, 41-42, 47, 48 ; Count 
Julian, 41 ; the Trilogy, 42 ; the 
Hellenics, 42-44 ; Idyllia Heroica, 
43 ; Poemata et Inscriptions, 43 ; 
Latin verse, 43, 45, 62 ; qualities as 
an artist, 44-47 ; blank -verse, 45 ; 
lyrical affluence, 46 ; restrictions, 48, 
49 ; lack of theme, 49 ; great as a 
writer of English prose, 49 ; Imag- 
inary Conversations, 50 ; Citation of 
Shakespeare, 51 ; the Pentameron, 
51 ; Pericles and Aspasia, 52-54 ; 
personal history and character con- 
sidered, 54-71; temperament, 55, 
56 ; extraordinary disposition and 
career, 55; physical gifts, 56; inde- 
pendence, 56, 57 ; vivacity, 57 ; por- 
trait by Dickens, 57 ; an amateur, 
58 ; but not a dilettant, 59 ; his love 
of nature, 60 ; biography by Forster, 
60 ; affection for animals, 61 ; clas- 



sicism, 62 ; radicalism, 62 ; learning, 
63 ; republicanism, 64 ; estimate of 
America, 64 ; critical powers, 64 ; 
technical excellence, 65 ; poetic ex- 
travagance, 66 ; fame, 66 ; desire for 
appreciation, 67 ; editions of his 
works, 66, 67 ; lines to Ablett, 68 ; 
Landor at seventy, 69 ; Last Fruit 
off an Old Tree, 69 ; Dry Sticks Fag- 
oted, 70 ; Heroic Idyls, 70 ; Landor 
venerated by Kate Field, A. G. 
Swinburne, and other young admir- 
ers, 70, 71 ; his death, 71 ; his clas- 
sicism distinct from Mrs. Brown- 
ing's, 122 ; opinion of " Aurora 
Leigh," 142 ; on Shakespeare's imi- 
tations, 232 ; sonnet to Browning, 
311 ; Swinburne compared to, 384; 
Swinburne's stanzas to, 396 ; and 
see 4, 30, 99, 103, 167, 191, 198, 236, 

3°3> 33 6 > 386, 39§> 400, 412, 423. 435' 

440, 446. 
Landscape. See Descriptive Faculty. 
Lang, Andrew, Ballads, etc., of Old 

France, Ballades in Blue China, 

Rhymes h la Mode, 475; Helen of 

Troy, id.; and see 466, 472, 476. 
Languages, the Greek and English 

contrasted, 206. 
La Saisiaz, etc., Browning's, 426. 
Last Fruit off an Old Tree, Landor's, 

69. 
Last Poems, Mrs. Browning's, 144. 
Latest Schools, 281 ; decoration a 

main end of, 286. 
Latin Hymns, 277. 
Latin Idyls, Landor's, translated, 69. 
Latin Students' Songs, Symonds's 

Wine, Women, and Song, 449. 
Latin Verse. See Greek and Latin 

Verses. 
Latter-Day Poets. See Chapters X. 

and XL ; their position and embar* 



504 



INDEX. 



rassments, 342, 343; remedial ef- 
forts, 344 ; dramatic instinct, 344 ; 
four representative names, 345 ; 
prodigal of verse, 345. 

Laureates, Warton, Pye, etc., 34; 
Tennyson, 172, 424 ; Southey and 
Wordsworth, 424. 

Lawlessness, evils of, exemplified, 
34o, 341. 

Laws of Art, their beneficent reaction, 

339- 

Lays of Ancient Rome, Macaulay's, 
250. 

Leadership in Art, often dependent 
on personal bearing, 357 ; prolonga- 
tion of Tennyson's and Browning's, 
415-418, 433 ; Swinburne's, 434. 

Learning, Landor's, 63 ; not a substi- 
tute for Imagination, 479. 

Lee-Hamilton, E. J., 465. 

Lefroy, E. C, 466. 

Leopardi, 455. 

Letter from a young English poet, 
299. 

Lewes, Marian Evans, 106, 120, 254, 
440. 

Lewis, Tayler, his theory of classical 
study, 121. 

Liddell, Catherine C. (Fraser-Tytler), 
464. 

Life and Death of fason, Morris's, 
370, 371. 

Life-Drama, Smith's, 263. 

Life-School, Browning the founder of 
the modern, 320 ; younger repre- 
sentatives, 320; portraiture a high 
art, 321 ; Rossetti's drawings and 
poems, 359. 

Light, 362. 

Lightness of Touch, 272. 

Light of Asia, The, E. Arnold's, 449. 

Limitations, Tennyson's, 188 ; Brown- 
ing's, 322 ; Buchanan's, 350. 



Linton, William James, 260, 261, 368; 
Claribel, etc., 270; versatility, 271. 

Literary Market, the, — criticism, 
book-making, etc., 464. 

Locker, Frederick, 273. 

Lockhart, John Gibson, 235. 

" Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," 
Tennyson's, 421, 422. 

London, its humane satirists and po- 
ets, 86, 470, 471. 

London Magazine, 77, 82, 107. 

London Poems, Buchanan's, 350, 351. 

London's Poet (Hood), 83. 

Longevity, 180 ; of intellectual poets, 
417. 

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 106, 
254, 302, 417, 423; translation of 
Dante, 276; and see American Po- 
ets. 

Longfellow, W. P. P., quoted, 480, 
481. 

" Lotos-Eaters," Tennyson's, likeness 
to portions of the Greek Idyls, 214- 
217. 

Love, its effect upon a woman's gen- 
ius, 132. 

Love Sonnets of Proteus, Blunt's, 460. 

Lover, Samuel, 258. 

Lowell, James Russell, remark upon 
Landor, 36; "Commemoration 
Ode," 400 ; and see 461, and Amer- 
ican Poets. 

Lucile, Lytton's, 268. 

Lucretius, 20, 32, 226. 

" Lucretius," Tennyson's, 181. 

Lnggie, The, Gray's,' 265. 

Luria, Browning's, reviewed, 310, 
311; exhibits the author's favorite 
characterization, 310; dedicated to 
Landor, 311 ; and see 319. 

" Lycidas," Milton's, 99, 396; com- 
pared with In Memoriam, 168. 

" Lycus the Centaur," Hood's, 75. 



INDEX. 



505 



Lyra Ger?nanica, etc., 278. 

Lyrical Poetry, refinement of Lan- 
dor's, 45 ; Arnold's lacking flow, 
92; Miss Barrett's, 129; distinction 
between a lyric and a song, 101 ; 
views of R. H. Stoddard, 101, 102; 
Browning's early lyrics, 302 ; dra- 
matic quality, 320; his occasional 
lyrics, 328, 329; their suggestive- 
ness, 329; defects, 329; Rossetti's 
lyrical faculty, 365 ; Swinburne's, 
394, 395, 39 6 > 434~43 6 5 Tennyson's 
later lyrics, 419-422; E. Mackay, 
461. 

Lyte, H. F., 277. 

Lytton, Edward, Lord, a novelist- 
poet, 254; King Arthur, 255; dra- 
mas, 255; translations, 274; re- 
marks on Horace, 275; and see 
441. 

Lytton, Robert, Lord, 267-269; Lu- 
cile, 268 ; likeness to his father, 
268 ; his imitation of Tennyson 
and Browning, 269; and see 320, 
328. 

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 
250, 251, 260. 

MacCarthy, Denis Florence, 259 ; se- 
lections from Calderon, 276. 

Macdonald, George, 264. 

Mackay, Charles, 259. 

Mackay, Eric, Love Letters of a Vio- 
linist, etc., 460. 

Maclagan, Alexander, 279. 

Macready, the Tragedian, 107, 236, 
308, 309. 

Madrigals, Stoddard's selection of, 
101. 

Magazines, 255. 

Maginn, William, 235. 

Magnitude, in Art, differing f rom 
greatness, ^77- 



Magnusson, Eirikr, 371. 

Mahabharata, the, E. Arnold's ver- 
sions, 450. 

Mahoney, Francis, 272. 

Malory, Sir Thomas, his black-letter 
romance, 176. 

Manfred, Byron's, 41. 

Mangan, James Clarence, 260. 

Mannerism, of the new schools, 286; 
Swinburne's, 383. 

Marino Faliero, Swinburne's, 437. 

Market, the Literary, 479, 480. 

Marlowe, 102, 442. 

Marriage, Procter's, 108 ; Mrs. Brown- 
ing's, 132 ; essential to full growth 
of a woman's genius, 132-136; re- 
lation to Art, 134; with respect to 
the husband, 134, 135; to the wife, 

i35- 

Marston, Westland, 282, 471. 

Marston, Philip Bourke, 282, 440. 

Martin, Theodore, Bon Gtialtier, 272 ; 
paraphrase of Horace, 274 ; Danish 
translations, 276. 

Marvell, Andrew, 28. 

" Mary Arden," E. Mackay's, 461. 

Mary Stuart, Swinburne's, 436. 

Marzials, Theophile, 284, 285, 470. 

Massey, Gerald, 263, 355. 

Massie, Richard, 278. 

Massinger, 105. 

Masterpieces, not recently produced, 
478. 

Masters, in Art, their triumph over 
restrictions, 30. 

Material, Poetic, 262, 334. 

Matter, his account of the Alexan- 
drian School, 205. 

Maud, and other Poems, Tennyson's r 

173, T-77- 
Maurice, Rev. F. D., 424. 
Mazzini, 64, 400, 423, 435. 
McGee, Thomas D'Arcy, 260. 



506 



INDEX. 



Mediaeval Studies, Browning's, 324, 
325; Swinburne's, 392. 

Mediocrity, popularity of, 452. 

Meditative School, its minor poets, 
241-248 ; general spirit of, 246- 
248 ; weakness and decline, 248 ; de- 
spondent tone, 287 ; and see 96-98. 

Melody, Rossetti's, 362, 365 ; Swin- 
burne's, 383, 395.' 

Memorials of Hood, by Mrs. Erode- 
rip, 88. 

Men and Wo?7ien, Browning's, 321- 
32S ; his representative book, 322 ; 
general excellence, 322. 

Meredith, George, 271, 447. 

Merivale, H. C, 471. 

Metaphysical Poetry, 163, 341 ; and 
see Transcendentalism. 

Metempsychosis, literary, 335. 

Method, Poetic, evils of unwise, 334, 

337- 
Metre, of In Me7?ioriam, 169; of 

"'The Daisy," 174; Swinburne's 

novel variations, 395 ; Ave atque 

Vale, 397. 
Middlemarch, George Eliot's, 254. 
MidsumiJier Holiday, A, Swinburne's, 

435- 

Millais, the artist, 358. 

Miller, Thomas, 259. 

Millet, J. F., 454, 455. 

Milman, Henry Hart, 236. 

Milnes, Richard Monckton (Lord 
Houghton), 37, 245, 440. 

Milton, his blank-verse, 46; Latinism, 
161 ; plan of an Arthurian epic, 
180; the Greek idyls, 232; his po- 
etic canon, 353 ; and see 37, 58, 60, 
119, 154, 156, 175, 184, 209, 292, 
299, 38 1, 442, 467. 

Mind-Reading, Browning's, 432. 

Minor Poets, 6 ; how affected by their 
period, 28. 



Mirabeau, 399. 

Mira7idola, Procter's, 107. 

Miscella7ieons Poets. The various 
groups, schools, and minor poets 
of the Victorian Period. See Chap- 
ters VII. and VIII., 234-292 ; an 
era fairly represented by its miscel- 
laneous poets, 234; early situation 
and outlook, 234; "retired list," 
235, 236; minor dramatists, 236; 
sentimentalists, 237 ; skill and re- 
finement of recent minor poets, 
240 ; those of the Elizabethan Pe- 
riod, 240; influence of Wordsworth 
— the Meditative School, 241-248 ; 
its characteristics, 247 ; decline, 
248 ; independent singers, 248-253 ; 
poetry of successful prose-writers, 
251 ; inferior novelist-poets, 253- 
255; magazinists, 255; diffusion of 
poor verse, 256; a few men of early 
promise, 256-258; song - writers, 
258-261 ; English and Scottish, 258, 
259; Irish, 260; Democratic and 
Chartist, 261 ; recent errors and af- 
fectations, 262, 285 ; the Rhapso- 
dists, or the " Spasmodic School," 
262-265 ; influence of Tennyson and 
Browning, 265-269 ; false simplicity, 
266; minor idyllic poets, 269-271; 
•vers de societe, satire, parody, etc., 
272, 273 ; translators and transla- 
tion, 273-276; hymnology, 277, 278; 
dialect-verse, 279; female poets, 
279-281; latest schools, 281-286; 
psychological and Neo-Romantic 
group, 281-286; poetry of the fan- 
tastic and grotesque, 285 ; want of 
wholesome criticism, 286 ; " schol- 
ar's work in poetry," 286 ; tone of 
the minor philosophic poets, 287- 
that of the idyllists, romancers, etc., 
287 ; present outlook, 289 ; British 



INDEX. 



507 



and American poets contrasted, 
290 ; freshness and individuality of 
the latter, 290; meaning of the re- 
cent aspect, 291 ; reflex influence of 
America upon the motherland, 291 ; 
the future, 292 ; great number of the 
minor Victorian poets, 286, 344; 
necrology, 439, 442 ; a prolific con- 
tingent, 447-454 ; a look round the 
latest field, 458-475; recent lack of 
assumption, 458 ; scenic tendency, 
465 ; university school, 462, etc. ; 
aesthetic group, 467 ; colonial, etc., 
468-470; society- verse, 473-475; 
want of national tone, 480-482. 

Miscellanies, Swinburne's, 43S. 

Miss Kilmansegg, Hood's, 79, 80, 84, 
85. 

Mitford, John, 242. 

Mitford, Mary Russell, portrait of 
Miss Barrett, 123; dramas, etc., 
236. 

Mixed School, 319. 

Moir, David Macbeth, 255. 

Moliere, 298. 

Monastic Studies, Browning's, 324, 

325- 

Montgomery, James, 235. 

Montgomery, Robert, 256. 

Moore, Thomas, 102, 203, 235, 238, 
258. 

Moral Epistle, Landor's, 39. 

Moralistic Group, 242. 

Morley, Henry, 441. 

Morris, Lewis, 451-453. 

Morris, William, Icelandic Transla- 
tions, 276; a Neo-Romantic poet, 
282-284; associated with Rossetti 
and Swinburne, 345, 358 ; decora- 
tive art-work, 358; review of his 
career and works, 366-378 ; an Ar- 
tist of the Beautiful, 366 ; serenity, 
366; compared with Keats, 367 ; 



practice in the arts of design, 367, 
368 ; pleasant ease of his poetry, 
368 ; The Defence of Gitenevere, 
368, 369 ; landscape, id. ; his ear- 
ly work like Rossetti's, 369; Pre- 
Raphaelite ballads, 369; The Life 
and Death of fason, 370, 371 ; a 
notable raconteur, 370, 372 ; his 
close knowledge of antiquities, 370, 
374 ; lack of variety, 3-/ 1 ; transla- 
tions from the Icelandic, etc., 371, 
372 ; The Earthly Paradise, 372- 
378 ; a successor to Boccaccio and 
Chaucer, 372, 375; not often highly 
imaginative, 373, 378 ; possessed of 
clear vision and speech, 374 ; fatal- 
istic moral of his verse, 375, 37J 5 
excessive facility, 3jy ; his station 
among the Neo-Romantic leaders, 
378 ; Saxon diction, 379 ; social re- 
form, 433 ; translations of Homer, 
Virgil, etc., id. ; Sigurd the Volsimg, 
ib. ; and see 40, 357, 392, 401, 450. 

Morte Darthur, Le, Malory's, 176. 

Morte d' Arthur, Tennyson's, 161, 177, 
220. 

Moschus. See Bion and Moschtcs. 

Motherwell, William, 235. 

Movement, the epic swiftness, 166. 

Miiller, Max, 372. 

Munby, Arthur J., Dorothy, etc., 454. 

Mundi et Cordis, Wage's, 256. 

My Beautiful Lady, Woolner's, 270. 

Myers, Ernest, 465. 

Myers, Frederic W. H., 246, 446. 

" My Last Duchess," Browning's, 321, 
322, 337, 425. 

Mysticism. See Transcendentalism. 

Myths and Legends, of The Earthly 
Paradise, 372. 

Nairn, Baroness, 120. 
Napier, Sir William, 38. 



508 



INDEX. 



Napoleon Fallen, Buchanan's, 347, 354. 

" Napoleon III. in Italy," Mrs. Brown- 
ing's, 143. 

Narrative Verse, Morris a master of, 
370, 372- 

Nation, The (Dublin), 260. 

Natural method, in Art, 38. 

Nature, Landor's love of, 60 ; Buchan- 
an's, 349 ; Swinburne's slight regard 
for, 401. 

Neale, John Mason, 277. 

Necrology, of twelve years, 439-442. 

"Neil, Ross," 472. 

Neo-Romantic School, 6, 281-286 ; led 
by Browning, Rossetti, Swinburne, 
281 ; French Romanticism, 284 ; 
carried to an extreme by Marzials, 
284, 285 ; relative positions of the 
leaders, 361, 378 ; Lang's Ballads of 
Old France, 475 ; its French min- 
strelsy an exotic, 477 ; and see 393, 
413, 416, 440, 445, also Romanti- 
cism. 

Nesbit, E., 464. 

Neukomm, Chevalier, 108. 

New Departure, a change from the 
idyllic method, 342. 

Newman, Francis William, 275. 

Newman, John Henry, 245, 278. 

New Monthly Magazine, 82. 

" New Princeton Review, The," quot- 
ed, 481. 

Nihehingen-Lied, 372. 

Nichol, John, 255. 

Nicoll, Robert, 261. 

Noel, Roden, 270, 446. 

Non-Creative Period, from Milton to 
Cowper, 21, 22. 

Norse Literature, 374. 

North-Coast Poems, Buchanan's, 350, 

35i- 
Norton, Caroline Elizabeth Sarah, 
120, 237. 



Note on Charlotte Bronte, A, Swin- 
burne's, 438. 

Notes on Poems and Reviews, Swin- 
burne's, 390. 

Novel, The, supplying the place of 
the drama, 25, 47, 295. 

Novelist-Poets, Kingsley and Thack- 
eray, 251 ; inferior names, 253-255 ; 
Meredith, 447. 

Novels in Verse, 453. 

Novel- Writing, diversion to, 479. 

Objective Dramatic Mode, con- 
trasted with Browning's, 431-433. 

Objectivity, in poetry, 47 ; Arnold's, 
92, 95 ; dramatic, 295 ; Morris's, 
366, 367. 

Obscurity, only the semblance of im- 
agination, 305. 

Obsolete Forms, 361. 

" Ode on the French Republic," Swin- 
burne's, 400. 

" Ode to Rae Wilson," Hood's, 78. 

Odes and Addresses, Hood's, yj. 

" CEnone," Tennyson's, the elegiac 
refrain, 213, resemblance to vari- 
ous passages in Theocritus, 213- 
214. 

Omar Khayyam, Rubdiydt of, 276, 398, 
456. 

Optimism, 422, 433. 

Orientalism, E. Arnold, 449, 450 ; 
Toru Dutt, 470. 

Originality, Tennyson's, 232 ; in what 
consisting, 297 ; Browning's, 293, 
297, 320, 338, 341 ; Buchanan's, 348. 

Original Plays, Gilbert's, 472. 

Orion, Home's, 249. 

Orphic utterances, of the Lake School 
and Buchanan, 347, 354. 

O'Shaughnessy, Arthur W. E., 284, 
440. 

"Othello," 310. 



INDEX. 



509 



Over-Culture, Arnold's reaction from, 
97 ; evils of, 1 24. 

Over-Possession, 145, 298. 

Over-Production, dangers of the liter- 
ary market, 470. 

" Owen Meredith." See Robei't, Lord 
Lytton. 

Oxford Group, 463. See U?iiversity 
School. 

Pacchiarotto, Browning's, 425. 

Painting, its recent services to poetry, 
35S ; the Pre-Raphaelite method, 
358 ; Rossetti's drawings, etc., 359; 
Crayon Verse, etc., 465. 

Palgrave, Francis Turner, 245-248 ; re- 
semblance to Arnold, 245 ; his Reign 
of Law, 245, 247 ; his attitude, 247 ; 
hymns, 278 ; and see 444. 

Parables, Hake's, 282. 

Paracelsus, Browning's, 305-308 ; ana- 
lytic power, 305 ; compared with 
Faust, 305 ; merits and defects, 306 ; 
garrulity, 306 ; fine diction, 306, 307 ; 
blank-verse, 307 ; meaning, 307. 

Paradise Lost, 161, 175, 180, 184; its 
theology, 353. 

Parleyings, etc., Browning's, 427. 

Parody, 272, 273, 304. 

Parr, Samuel, 37. 

Parsons, Thomas W., lines " On a Bust 
of Dante," 364. 

Pascal, Blaise, 147. 

Passion, two kinds, 91 ; Pippa Passes, 
316; moral of Browning's, 332; en- 
nobling to Art, 333 ; Tennyson's in- 
crease of, 416, 420; Rossetti's son- 
nets, 439 ; recent lack of, 482. 

Pastoral Verse, of Wordsworth, Bry- 
ant, and Buchanan, 349; Munby's, 

454- 
* Pathetic Fallacy," the, 445. 
Patmore, Coventry, 266, 267, 446. 



Patriotic Verse, 259, 260. 
Paul, C. Kegan, 472. 
Payne, John, 283, 445. 
Peacock, Thomas Love, 235. 
Pedantry, the rage for elucidation, 

43°- 

Peel, Sir Robert, 89. 

Peerage, the, Tennyson and, 422-424. 

Pendennis, Thackeray's, 142. 

Pentavieron, Landor's, 48, 51. 

Pericles and Aspasia, Landor's, 38, 
5h 54- 

Persian Quatrain, 283. 

Pessimism, 422 ; J. Thomson, 456. 

" Peter Pindar," 238. 

Petrarch, 11. 

Petty, Sir William, his declaration of 
faith, 192. 

Pfeiffer, Emily, 453, 454. 

Philanthropy, Hood's and Dickens's, 
83, 84; Arnold's, 91 ; Mrs. Brown- 
ing's, 129. 

Philip Van Artevelde, Taylor's, 237. 

Philips, Ambrose, 232. 

Philistinism, its defence and arraign- 
ment, 328 ; false distinction between 
Browning and Swinburne, 330. 

Philoctetes, Warren, 283. 

Philology, Landor's, 65. 

Phocceans, Landor's, 41. 

Piano-music, a term applied to recent 
verse, 191. 

Pindar, 60, 204, 205. 

Pippa Passes, Browning's, 306, 313, 
315-319; his most simple and beau- 
tiful drama, 315 ; scene between Ot- 
tima and Sebald, 316-318 ; too intel- 
lectual and subjective, 318; a work 
of pure art, 319 ; its faults and beau- 
ties, 319; quoted, 339. 

Plagiarism, 210, 211. 

Plato, 14, 119, 303; Landor's opinion, 
70; description of a poet, 149. 



5*o 



INDEX. 



Plav, Form of the, its advantages for 
a masterpiece, 295. 

Playwrights, 295 ; Buchanan, 445 ; and 
see 471, 472. 

Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, 
Hood's, 75. 

Pleiade, the French, 474. 

Plumptre, Edward Hayes, 246. 

Poe, Edgar Allan, Sonnet to Science, 
8 ; indebted to Procter, 106 ; esti- 
mate of Tennyson, 154, 210; Thom- 
son's likeness to, 455, 456; and see 
American Poets. 

Poemata et Inscriptions, Landor's, 

43- 

Poems, Tennyson's volume of 1832, 
15S, 210; of 1842, 160. 

Poems and Ballads, Swinburne's, 3S9- 
396 ; criticism evoked by this book, 
390 ; the poet's rejoinder, 390 ; re- 
printed in America, 390 ; a collec- 
tion of early poems, 391, 392; me- 
diaeval studies, 392 ; French, He- 
braic, and Italian influences, 393 ; 
poetic quality, 394 ; extravagance, 
395 ; novel and beautiful metres, 
395 ; a suggestive volume, 396. 

Poems and Ballads, 2d Series, Swin- 
burne's, 434. 

Poems before Congress, Mrs. Brown- 
ing's, 143. 

Poems by Two Brothers, 157. 

Poems, chiefly Lyrical, Tennyson's, 

157, 158. 

Poems of Rural Life, Barnes's, 279. 

Poetic Decline, Mrs. Browning's, 143. 

Poetic Revival (1791-1824), 22, 240. 

Poetry, compared with sister-arts, 3, 
156; Poetry and Science, 8, 20; its 
office, 16; "poetry of the future," 
21, 31, 32, 341 ; its reserved domain, 
21; advance as an art, 25-27; the 
lasting kind, 76 ; Arnold's theory, 



95, 97 ; four great orders, 204 ; dif- 
fusion of inferior verse, 256 ; Poetry 
a jealous mistress, 258 ; elements as 
an art, 293 ; a means of expression, 
298 ; what constitutes a poet, 298 ; 
misuse of the term, 299; Brown- 
ing's theory, 301 ; Lessing on Po- 
etry and Painting, 358 ; obligations 
of the former to the latter, 358 ; a 
century of, 415 ; annotation of, 4^1 ; 
vitality of, 441, 474; national style 
required, 481 ; and see Latter-Day 
Poets, Miscellaneous Poets, Dramatic 
Poetry, Idyllic Poetry, etc., etc. 

Poetry of the Period, The, Austin's es- 
says, 450. 

Poets of America, by the author of 
this volume : references to, 2, 3, 4, 
18, 20, 21, 22, 25, 28, 37, 53, 77, 81, 
82, 96, 99, 118, 120, 146, 147, 148, 
150, 161, 166, 189, 190, 191, 199, 244, 
2 5 T > 253, 258, 2 66, 272, 270, 2S9, 290, 
2 95> 299, 343, 344. 370, 372, 45°>455> 
473, 479- 

Political Verse, Swinburne's, 436. 

Pollock, W. H., 466. 

Pollok, 452. 

Polyglot poets, 466. 

Pope, imitated by Landor, 39 ; resem- 
blance between him and Tenny- 
son, 184 ; difference, 185 ; deficient 
in suggestiveness, 186; " Pastorals," 
215; and see 40, 60, 154, 163, 200, 
232, 273, 274. 

Popularity, no guarantee of fame, 

452- _ 

Positivism, " Geo. Eliot," 254 ; Call, 
Blind, etc., 457. 

Poverty, unfriendly to Art, 81, 82 ; fel- 
lowship of the poor, 8^ ; the " gen 
teel poor," 83. 

Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, 238, 272 

Pre-Chancerian Period, 369. 



INDEX. 



511 



Pre -Chaucerian Verse and Method, 

i79» 359- 378. 

Precision of Touch, 361. 

Precocity, 243. 

Pre - Raphaelitism, Tennyson's, in 
youth, 155, 176; Browning's, 339; 
the painters of the school, 358 ; its 
relation to academic art, 358; Ros- 
setti's, in poetry and painting, 359 ; 
Morris's, 369 ; feeling of the true 
disciple, 369, 370 ; its Stained-Glass 
verse, 477 ; and see 266, 300, 463. 

" Prince Hohenstiel - Schwangau," 
Browning's, 337. 

Princess, The, Tennyson's, 164-167, 
220, 225. 

Prior, 473. 

Procter, Adelaide Anne, 107, 254, 280. 

Procter, Bryan Waller (" Barry Corn- 
wall "), 7 3 ; review of his career and 
writings, 100-113; his birth, 100; 
a natural vocalist, 100; genuine 
quality of his songs, 101, 102 ; his 
youth and early associates, 103 ; a 
pioneer of the recent school, 103 ; 
preface to his " Dramatic Scenes," 
103; a pupil of Leigh Hunt, 103; 
restrictions upon his dramatic gen- 
ius, 104 ; a poet of the Renaissance, 
105; Dramatic Scenes, etc., 105; 
his influence upon other poets, 106 ; 
Mirandola, 107 ; poems of a later 
date, T07 ; his daughter Adelaide, 

107 ; home and domestic happiness, 

108 ; English Songs, 109-112 ; their 
number and beauty, 109; Stoddard's 
estimate of them, 109 ; their sur- 
prising range and variety, 112; 
"Dramatic Fragments," 113; his 
old age and death, 113 ; "A Blot in 
the 'Scutcheon" dedicated to him, 
313 ; and see 26, 167, 236, 258, 412, 
441. 



Progress, Law of, in Art, 17, 27. 

Promethetis, of ^Eschylus, 42 ; trans- 
lated by Mrs. Browning, 121. 

Prometheus Unbound, Shelley's, 380, 
386, 388. 

" Promise of May, The," Tennyson's, 
418. 

Propagandism, 351, 353; Buchanan's. 

355> 356. 

Prose, rarely confused with Verse by 
true poets, yj ; Landor's, 37 ', 42, 49, 
51 ; Arnold's, 99, 100; Mrs. Brown- 
ing's, 123 ; recent prose-writers who 
have written poetry, 251-253; sharp- 
ly distinguished from poetry, 299 ; 
Swinburne's, 401, 404, 43S ; Gosse's, 
458. 

Prose Romance, a rival to poetry, 
343 ; the modern period of, 343. 

Protectorate, The. See Cromwellian 
Period. 

Psychological Verse, Browning's, 297, 
309; and see 416, 431-433, 465, and 
Neo-Romantic School. 

Ptolemy Philadelphus, 206, 207. 

Public Taste, law of change in, 1 50 ; 
application to Tennyson, 151, 152. 

Publishers, 479. 

Puritans, the, 309. 

Pye, Henry James, 34. 

Quaintness, Rossetti's, 361, 362. 
Quality, deficient in Arnold, 93 ; in 

Tennyson, 183; an intuitive grace, 

258, 259 ; quality and quantity, 361 ; 

Eric Mackay's, 461. 
Quarles, Francis, 283. 
Queen Anne's Time, 295, 416, 43i. 
Queen Mary, Tennyson's, 413, 418. 
Queen Mother, Swinburne's, 384-3S6, 

392, 404. 
Queen of Scots. * See Mary Stuart* 



512 



INDEX. 



Radicalism, and conservatism, 423. 

Radical Poets, 262, 456, 457. 

Rafael, 323. 

Raffalovich, M. A., 466. 

Range, 47. 

Rationalism vs. Calvinism, 329. 

Rational method in Art, 9. 

Real and Ideal, 332. 

Realism, modern, 12; Tennyson's, 
188; Patmore's, 266; Dobell's, 267; 
limits of, 304; as a substitute for 
imagination, 327 ; abuse of the 
term, 359 ; definition of true, 478. 

Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, Brown- 
ing's, 337- 

Reform-verse, Buchanan's, 355. 

Refrains, Mrs. Browning's, 145, 146. 

" Reign of Law," Palgrave's, 245, 247. 

Religious feeling, Mrs. Browning's, 
147 ; Tennyson's attitude, 192. 

Renaissance, the, 105 ; revival of old 
forms, 286 ; a fashion of the day, 

477, 479- 

Republicanism, Landor's, 64 ; Swin- 
burne's, 399, 423. 

Reputation, 356. 

Restraint, Arnold's, 91 ; lack of, among 
subjective poets, 145 ; Buchanan's 
need of, 348 ; an element of perfect 
art, 410. 

Retrospective Summary, 412-414. 

Return of the Drtises, Browning's, 310, 
312, 313; classical form, 313. 

Reverence in Art, 148 ; Tennyson's, 
192. 

Revival, Wells's Joseph, 441. 

Revolutionary poems, Swinburne's, 
399-401. 

Reynolds, Jane (Mrs. Hood), 89. 

Rhapsodists. See Spasmodic School. 

Rhetoric, 288. 

Rhyme, Browning's Use of, discussed, 
428. 



" Rhyme of the Duchess May," Mrs. 
Browning's, 125. 

Rhythm, Tennyson's, 226, 227 ; Swin- 
burne's, 380-383, 402. 

Richter, Jean Paul, 147. 

Rieitzi, Miss Mitford's, 236. 

Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 86. 

Ring and the Book, Browning's, 334- 
336 ; deemed his greatest work, 334 ; 
an intellectual prodigy, 334 ; outline 
of, 335 ; style of certain passages, 
335; estimate of, as a poem, 336; 
and see 341. 

Rispetti and Slornelli. See Italian 
Reriod. 

Ritualism, 410. 

" Rizpah," Tennyson's, 420. 

Roberts, Charles G. D., 469. 

Robinson, A. Mary F., 463. 

Robinson, Crabb, 51. 

Rodd, Rennell, 467. 

Rogers, Samuel, 235. 

Roman, The, Dobell's, 267. 

Romanticism, 74; French Romantic 
School, 284; carried to an extreme, 
284, 285 ; contrasted with classi- 
cism, 313; the early, 359; Swin- 
burne's, 404; and see 412, and Neo- 
Rom antic School. 

"Romaunt of the Page," Miss Bar- 
rett's, 123. 

" Rosamond," Swinburne's. See Queen 
Mother. 

" Rose Aylmer," Landor's, 46, 303. 

Rossetti, Christina Georgina, 280, 

443- 
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, compared 
with Tennyson, 176; Neo-Romanti- 
cism, 282-284; Early Italian Poets, 
276, 360; relations with Morris and 
Swinburne, 345, 358, 369, 378; re- 
view of his works and career, 357— 
366; birth, 357; distinctive force 



INDEX. 



513 



and attitude, 357 ; influence as a 
leader, 357 ; a circle called by his 
name, 357; an early Pre-Raphaelite 
in art and poetry, 358, 359; a man 
of genius, 359; ballads, 359; Italian 
parentage, 360 ; Poems, 360-365 ; 
his conscientiousness, 361 ; quaint- 
ness of diction and accent, 361, of 
feeling, 362 ; a master of the Neo- 
Romantic school, 361 ; simplicity, 
and precision of touch, 361 ; terse- 
ness, 361 ; an earnest and spiritual 
artist, 362 ; melody, 362, 365 ; light 
and color, 362 ; " The Blessed Dam- 
ozel," 363; mediaeval ballads, 364; 
miscellaneous poems, 364 ; a trans- 
lator from the old French, 364 ; lyr- 
ical faculty, 365 ; dramatic power, 
365 ; a sonneteer, 365 ; his imagina- 
tion, 365 ; aspects of his poetry and 
career, 365, 366; The House of Life, 
366, 439 ; his death, 439 ; memori- 
als of, 439 ; Stained-Glass poetry of 
his pupils, 477 ; and see 2, 320, 386, 
39 l > 39 2 > 4i3> 44i, 451, 463, 465, 468, 
476. 
Ruskin, John, on Art as a means of 
Expression, 288 ; his word-painting, 
288 ; on popular appreciation, 298 ; 
and see 445, 463, 467. 

Sacred Verse. See Hymnology. 

Sand, George, 120. 

Sappho, 115, 435. 

Satire, 272; Browning's, 425; Court- 
hope, 471. 

Saxon English, in translating Homer, 
371 ; Morris's diction, 379. 

" Scairth o' Bartle," Buchanan's, 352, 

354- 
Scenic Tendency, 465, 466. 
Schoell, quoted, 206, 239. 
Science, its iconoclastic stress, 7 ; bear- 



ing on religion and poetry, 7 ; no 
inherent antagonism, 8 ; a tempo- 
rary struggle, 9; Lyell, Darwin, 
Agassiz, Huxley, Spencer, 13, 19; 
approaching harmony, 19-21 ; ad- 
dress of Dr. Wurz, 19; complete 
understanding not yet possible, 21 ; 
use of scientific material by Tenny- 
son in " In Memoriam," etc., 170, 
193 ; Wordsworth upon relations of 
science and poetry, 193 ; effect up- 
on modern imagination, 343 ; and 
see 457. 

Scholar-Poets. See University School. 

Scholar's work, modern, 479. 

Schopenhauer, 455. 

Scotland, represented by Buchanan in 
recent poetry, 346 ; character of the 
Scottish element, 346, 347. 

Scott, Clement W., 470. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 34, 104, 176, 203. 

Scott, William Bell, his Year of the 
World, 257 ; Poet's Harvest Home, 
446 ; and see 270, 368. 

Scottish Idyls, Buchanan's, 349, 350^ 

35 2 - 

Seasons, The, Thomson's, 188. 

Seclusion, effect on Tennyson, 190. 

Sensuousness, 389-391. 

Sentiment, 470. 

Sentimentalism, 237, 412, 478. 

Seraphim, Mrs. Browning's, 123, 124. 

Serenity of mood, 366. 

Serio-Comic Verse, 272, 273. 

Shairp, John Campbell, 279. 

Shakespeare, his human sympathy, 
37 ; stage-presentation of his plays, 
38; his women, 314; diction caught 
by Swinburne, 385 ; and see n, 14, 
63, 75, 102, 142, 156, 192, 204, 224, 
292, 294, 298, 307, 329, 381, 413, 44?, 
461. 

" Shakespeare's Scholar," 24. 



5i4 



INDEX. 



Shakespeare Societies, 430. 

Sharp, William, his volume on Ros- 
setti, 439 ; and see 468. 

Shelley, his Adonais, 99 ; classical 
instinct, 121 ; translations, 122 ; Mrs. 
Browning's resemblance to, 1 24 ; 
Greek idyls, 232 ; Revolt of Islam, 
354 ; rhythmical genius, compared 
to Swinburne's, 380, 381, 383; Shel- 
ley societies, 430 ; and see 34, 39, 
41, 64, 74, 168, 180, 203, 209, 236, 



274, 3 2 9> 



392, 396, 400, 401, 



411, 412, 438,455,476. 

Shenstone, William, 232. 

" Shepherd's Idyl," resemblance to 
" Cyclops," 228. 

Shirley, James, 28. 

Sicilian Idyls, 204; and see Greek 
Idyls. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, 52, 147, 176. 

Sigurd the Volsung, Morris's, 443. 

Simcox, George Augustus, 2S2. 

Simmons, Bartholomew, 255. 

Simplicity, Hood's, 88 ; spurious, of 
minor poets, 265, 266 ; Tennyson's, 
266 ; classical, 313 ; Rossetti's, 361. 

Singleton, Mrs., 453. 

Skepticism, its bearing on creative art, 
18 ; faith and doubt of In Memori- 
am, 170. 

Sladen, D. B. W., 469. 

Smedley, Menella B., 440. 

Smith, Alexander, 263. 

Smith, the brothers James and Hor- 
ace, 235. 

Smith, Walter C, 453. 

Socialism, increase of, 482. 

Societies, the Browning, etc., 430, 431. 

Society Verse, restored by Praed, 
238 ; " Owen Meredith's," 268 ; re- 
cent, 272; Locker, Calverley, etc., 
273; characteristics, 272, 273 ; mark 
of a refined period, 273 ; specific 



renewal of, 473-475; Dobson and 
his influence, 273,473,474; an in- 
terlude, 474 ; the Debonair poets, 
477 ; Kensington-Stitch Verse, 477 ; 
and see 466, 471. 

" Sohrab and Rustum," Arnold's, 92- 
94. 

Song of Italy, Swinburne's, 400. 

" Song of the Shirt," Hood's, 87, 88, 
90, 130. 

Songs, and Song-Making ; the latter 
almost a lost art, 101 ; special quality 
of the song, 101 ; Stoddard's defini- 
tion of, 102 ; songs of the eighteenth 
century, 102; Procter's, 102; Ten- 
nyson's, 163 ; charm and office of 
songs, 258 ; Victorian song-makers, 
258-261 ; Irish and patriotic, 259, 
260 ; chartist and democratic, 260, 
261 ; songs in Swinburne's ballads, 
395 ; Aide, Marzials, Scott, Ashby- 
Sterry, Merivale, etc., 470, 471. 

Songs before Sunrise, Swinburne's, 400, 
401. 

Songs of the Cavaliers and Round- 
heads, Thornbury's, 252. 

Songs of the Springtides, Swinburne's, 

435- 

Sonnets, Rossetti's, 365 ; Mrs. Brown- 
ing's, 365 ; Gosse's, 459 ; Blunt's, 
460 ; Watts's, 464 ; Caine's, Dow- 
den's, etc., 465. 

Sonnets from the Portuguese, Mrs. 
Browning's, 136; reviewed, 137, 138. 

Sordello, Browning's, 309, 310; con- 
trasted with Sartor Resartus, 310; 
and see 334, 340. 

SouVs Tragedy, Browning's, 311, 319. 

Southey, 34, t>7, 4*, 57, 61, 68, 235, 
356, 361, 400, 480. 

Spanish Gypsey, George Eliot's, 254. 

" Spartacus," 261. 

Spasmodic School, notice of, 262-265; 



INDEX. 



5*5 



origin of the epithet, 262 ; satirized 
by Aytoun, 262 ; faults, 263 ; and 
see 355. 
Spencer, Herbert, law of progress, 

'55- 

Spenser, 154, 176. 

" Speranza," 260. 

Spirituality, of Mrs. Browning, 148 ; 
of Rossetti, 362 ; inseparable from 
true Realism, 478, 479. 

Spontaneity, Procter's, 100 ; Mrs. 
Browning's, 145 ; slight in Tenny- 
son, 183 ; essential to lyric art, 253 ; 
Rossetti's, 365 ; M. Collins's, 441 ; 
and see 241, 258, 289. 

St. Abe, Buchanan's, 355. 

Stage-Plays, Buchanan's, 355; Tenny- 
son's, 418, 419; Gilbert's, 472. 

Stage, the, 294, 295, 410; relation to 
modern authorship, 480. 

Stained-Glass Poetry, 477. 

Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, 278. 

" Statue and the Bust," Browning's, 

332. 

Sterling, John, 243. 

Stevenson, Robert L. B., 468. 

Stoddard, Richard Henry, upon the 
lyric and the song, 101 ; eulogy of 
Procter's songs, 109 ; and see 254. 

Story, W. W., 465. 

Strafford, Browning's, 308, 309, 311. 

" Strayed Singers," 236. 

Stuart, Mary, Queen of Scots, Swin- 
burne's ideal of, 404, 405, 407-409. 

Studies, a substitute for spontaneous 
work, 95; Browning's, 327, — their 
defects, 327, subjectivity, 327, ex- 
cessive realism and detail, 327. 

Studies in Song, Swinburne's, 435. 

Style, Mrs. Browning's, 124; Tenny- 
son's, 189; Browning's, 429. 

Style, National, recent lack of, 480- 
482 ; W. P. P. Longfellow quoted, 



480; how to maintain, 481 ; what 
its absence implies, 482. 

Subjectivity, hi poetry, 47 ; a feminine 
trait, 147 ; Mrs. Browning's, 148 ■, 
Byron's, 197 ; Tennyson's, 197 ; 
Browning's, 296, 340 ; hurtful to 
Pippa Passes, 318. 

Suckling, 76, 272, 473. 

Suggestiveness, 329. 

Sullivan, Arthur S., 476. 

Swain, Charles, 259. 

" Swallow Song," in The Princess, 220. 

Swanwick, Anna, 275, 472. 

Swedenborg, 148. 

" Sweetness and Light," 100. 

Swift, 352. 

Swinburne, Algernon Charles, unites 
qualities of Browning and Rossetti, 
6; on Landor's first book, 39; pil- 
grimage to Italy, 71 ; influence, 179; 
Neo-Romanticism, 281, 283 ; clas- 
sicism, etc., 313, 386-389, 393 ; erotic" 
verse, and Browning's, 330 ; asso- 
ciated with Rossetti and Morris, 
345 ; review of his genius and ca- 
reer, 379-412; birth, 379; diction 
contrasted with Morris's, 379 ; sur- 
prising command of rhythm, 380-" 
383; compared to Shelley, 380 ; un- 
precedented melody and freedom, 
381 ; the most dithyrambic of poets, 
381 ; expression carried to fatiguing 
excess, 382 ; voice and execution, 
383 ; likeness to Landor, 384, 398 ; 
linguistic gifts and attainments, 384 ; 
The Queen Mother and Rosamond, 
384-386 ; Elizabethan manner of 
these plays, 384 ; a diversion from 
the idyllic method, 386 ; Atacanta in 
Calydon, 386-389 ; Poems and Bal- 
lads, 389-396 ; excitement aroused 
by this book, 389, 390 ; " Notes on 
Poems and Reviews," 390; a liter- 



5i6 



INDEX. 



ary antagonism, 390, 391 ; the vol- 
ume an outgrowth of the poet's 
formative period, 391, 392 ; early- 
Gothic studies, 392 ; French, He- 
braic, and classical influences, 393 ; 
lyrical genius, 394-399 ; " Ave atque 
Vale," 396, 398 ; Baudelaire, 396 ; 
tribute to Gautier, 398 ; Latin and 
Greek verse, 398, 399 ; revolution- 
ary poems, 399 ; the poet's grand- 
father, 399 ; Song of Italy, 400 ; 
" Ode on the French Republic," 
400 ; Songs before Sunrise, 400 ; few 
early poems of Nature, 401 ; prose- 
writings, 401 ; critical traits, 40 1, 
402 ; Under the Microscope, 402 ; es- 
timate of American poets, 402, 403 ; 
Chastelard, 404-406 ; the poet's con- 
ception of Mary Stuart, 404 ; Both- 
well, 406-410 ; the author in the 
front rank of modern dramatic po- 
ets, 406 ; the Stuart "trilogy," 406 
et sea. ; lack of restraint, 410 ; 
amount and richness of his work, 
41 1, 434 ; application, 412 ; a leader 
of recent form, 434 ; Erectheus, 434 ; 
Poems and Ballads, 2d Series, 434 ; 
elegiac odes, etc., 435 ; Studies in 
Song, ib. ; Songs of the Springtides, 
ib. ; A Midsummer Holiday, ib. ; A 
Century of Roundels, 436 ; political 
verse, ib. ; Tristram of lyonesse, ib. ; 
later dramas, 436-438 ; Mary Stu- 
art, 436 ; Marino Faliero, 437 ; com- 
pared to Byron, 438 ; Victor Htcgo, 
438 ; prose Miscellanies, ib. ; liter- 
ary influence, ib. ; and see 2, 31, 38, 
43> 7i, 168, 187, 290, 320, 325, 357, 
364, 413, 441, 445, 450, 461, 466, 467, 
469, 476. 

Swinburne, Sir John, 399. 

Sylvia, Darley's, 236. 

Sympathy, law of, in Art, 38. 



Symonds, J. Addington, 447-449 ; an 

exemplar of Taste, 448. 
Synthesis, 182, 241. 

Tadema, Alma, 257. 

Taine, H. A., critical theory, i 5 410, 
434 ; quoted, 143 ; analysis of Ten- 
nyson, 194; its defects, 195, merits, 
195, 196 ; estimate of De Musset 
and Tennyson, 195. 

Talent, distinguished from genius, 321, 
448. 

Talfourd, Sir Thomas Noon, 236, 419. 

Tasso, 11. 

Taste, British, subordinate to love 
of novelty, 31 ; deficient in Mrs. 
Browning, 126; faultless in Tenny- 
son, 187 ; the parent of versatility, 
368 ; Symonds an exemplar of, 447, 
448. 

Taylor, Bayard, tone of his early lyr- 
ics, 112; translation of Eaust, 276. 

Taylor, Jeremy, 65. 

Taylor, Sir Henry, his Preface to 
Philip van Artevelde, 28, 29,- 237 ; 
and see 2, 47. 

Technique, recent perfection of, 22, 
412, 458; Landor's, 65; Morris's, 
374 ; recent models, 416. 

Temperament, Byron's, and Mrs. 
Browning's, 198; the poetic, when 
unsustained by true genius, 264. 

Tennant, William, 235. 

Tennyson, Alfred, his blank-verse, 46 ; 
the same, compared with Arnold's, 
93 ; hints from Procter, 106 ; con- 
trasted with Mrs. Browning, 144, 
145 ; review of his poems, genius, 
and career, 1 50-200 ; birth, 1 50 ; 
prolonged influence, 151 ; recently 
subjected to adverse criticism, 151, 
152 ; "The Flower," and "A Spite- 
ful Letter," 152; represents his era, 



INDEX. 



517 



153 ; an independent leader, 154; 
Poe's opinion of him, 154 ; high 
average of his poetry, 155 ; hin- 
drances to a correct estimate, 155; 
a born artist, 155; youthful pieces, 
155; their Pre - Raphaelitism, 155, 
176; their charm, 156, 157; early 
study of details, 1 56 ; Poems, chiefly 
Lyrical, 1 57 ; Poems by Two Broth- 
ers, 157 ; volume of 1832, Poems, 
158-160; sudden poetic growth, 

1 58 ; an expression of the beauti- 
ful, 158; at the head of the "Art- 
School," 159; tendency of his gen- 
ius, and influences affecting it, 1 59 ; 
Greek influence, 159; "CEnone," 

1 59 ; purely English idyls, 1 59 ; the 
volume of 1842, Poems, 160-164; a 
treasury of his representative po- 
ems, 160 ; advance in thought and 
art, 160 ; formation of his blank- 
verse style, 160 ; its originality and 
perfection, 161 ; epic verse of 
" Morte d' Arthur," 161 ; Victorian 
idyllic style of his other blank-verse 
poems, 162 ; " Dora," " Godiva," 
"Ulysses," etc., 162; comprehen- 
sive range of English Idyls and 
Other Poems, 162, 163 ; a composite 
and influential volume, 164 ; The 
Princess, 164-167 ; its group of lyr- 
ics, 166 ; isometric songs, 166 ; in- 
tellectual growth and advantage, 
167; at his prime, 168; In Memo- 
riam, reviewed, 168-172 ; his most 
distinctive effort, 168 ; greatest of 
elegiac masterpieces, 168, 169 ; its 
metrical and stanzaic arrangement, 
169; its general quality, 171 ; Ten- 
nyson made Laureate, 172 ; the 
Wellington Ode, 172 ; other occa- 
sional pieces, 173 ; Maud and Other 
Poems, 173, 174; Idyls of the King, 



reviewed at length, 175-180 ; love , 
of allegory, 176 ; early and later 
blank -verse, 177; recent manner- 
isms, 179 ; English, 179 ; steady ad- 
vance in work and fame, 180 ; Enoch 
Arden and Other Poems, 181 ; " Lu- 
cretius," 181 ; dialect - poems, etc., 
181 ; general characteristics of his v 
genius, 182-189 ; synthetic perfec- , 
tion, 182 ; lack of spirit and quality, 
183 ; a conscientious artist, 183 ; 
certain weaknesses, 183 ; Tennyson 
and Pope, their points of resem- 
blance, 184, 185 ; points of differ- 
ence, 185, 186; supreme and com- 
plex modern art of Tennyson, 186 ; 
taste, 187 ; an idyllist, 187 ; descrip- 
tive faculty, 188; limitations, 188; ^ 
style, 189 ; lack of the true dramatic 
gift, 189-191,413; secluded life, 
190; his ideal personages, 190 ; per- 
fectly adapted to his time, 191 ; a 
liberal conservative in politics, 191, 
192, in religion, 192 ; artistic rever- 
ence, 192 ; verse conformed to mod- 
ern progress and discovery, 193, 194 ; » 
Taine's analysis, its defects, 195 ; 
its merits, 195, 196; Tennyson and 
Byron contrasted, 196-198 ; their 
difference in method, 197, in per- 
ception and imagination, 197, in 
subjectivity, 197, in influence, 198; 
Tennyson's ideal poetic career, 198, 
199; final summary of the forego- ^ 
ing analysis, 199, 200. (For a sup- 
plemental notice of Tennyson and 
the idyllic school, including his ob- 
ligations to Theocritus, and a view 
of the resemblance between the Al- 
exandrian and Victorian periods, see 
Tennyson and Theocritus.) The 
Laureate's influence upon minor 
poets, 265-271 ; imitated by " Owen 



w 



5 i8 



INDEX. 



Meredith," 269; his method easily 
studied in the verse of his pupils, 
269 ; joins the new dramatic move- 
ment, 413; Queen Mary, 413, 418; his 
prolonged leadership, and Brown- 
ing's, 416-418 ; longevity, 417 ; im- 
pulsiveness, 418 ; later dramatic 
work, 418, 419 ; " The Cup," " The 
Falcon," " The Promise of May," 
418; Harold and Becket, 419; later 
lyrical volumes, 419-422 ; Ballads, 
etc., 420 ; Tiresias, 420 ; the second 
" Locksley Hall " and " Vastness," 
421, 422 ; elevation to the Peerage, 
422-424 ; Whitman on, 424 ; record 
as Laureate, 424 ; his relation, and 
Browning's, to the Period, 433 ; no 
longer imitated, 476 ; and see also 
2, 26, 30, 31, 34, 35, 62, 102, 105, 116, 
i3°> 2 34, 238, 241, 244, 273, 274, 277, 
279, 281, 290, 291, 320, 322, 335, 342, 

343> 344, 348, 3 6l > 3 66 > 3^2, 384, 3 86 > 
436, 450, 460. 
Tennyson and Theocritus, resem- 
blances between these poets, and 
between their respective periods, 
201-233 ; text of the Greek idyls, 
201, 212 ; " Epitaph of Bion," by 
Moschus, 201 ; obligations of Ten- 
nyson to the Syracusan poets, 202 ; 
points taken, 202, 203 ; Theocritus, 
the father of idyllic song, 204 ; the 
fourth great order of poetry, 204 ; 
previous references to this subject, 
204 ; study of the Alexandrian Era, 
205-208 ; Matter and Schoell's de- 
scriptions, 205, 206 ; comparison of 
the Greek and English tongues, 
206 ; the reign of Ptolemy II., 207 ; 
rise of Theocritus, 207 ; birth of the 
idyl, 207, 208 ; Kingsley upon The- 
ocritus, 208 ; Tennyson at Cam- 
bridge, 209 ; Warton's edition of 



Theocritus, 209, Kiessling's, 209; 
formation of the Laureate's style, 
210 ; influence of his Dorian stud- 
ies, 210; two modes of resemblance 
between poets, 210, 211; original 
translations from the Syracusan po- 
ets, and their likeness to portions 
of Tennyson's verse, 21 1-23 1 ; " Hy- 
las " and " Godiva," 21 1-2 13 ; meth- 
od pursued in translation, 212 ; the 
elegiac refrain, 213 ; " GEnone," 213, 
214; "The Lotos - Eaters," thor- 
oughly Dorian, 214-217 ; Virgil and 
Pope, 215 ; Tennyson's modern idyls, 
217-219; the isometric song, 218 ; 
amoebean contests, 218 ; where the 
Laureate is independent, 219; 
Burns, 219 ; general co-relations of 
Theocritus and Tennyson, 219; 
" Swallow Song," 220 ; miscella- 
neous passages compared, 221-225 ; 
minor resemblances, 225, 226 ; simi- 
lar effects of rhythm, 226 ; Dorian 
melody, 227 ; " Cyclops " and the 
" Shepherd's Idyl," 228, 229 ; " The 
Thalysia" and its modern counter- 
parts, 229-231 ; Tennyson none the 
less original, 232 ; Emerson and 
Landor upon originality, 232 ; 
pseudo-pastoral verse of other Eng- 
lish periods, 232 ; the true idyl re- 
vived by Tennyson, 233; and see 
159, 187. 

Tennyson, Charles. See Charles Tur- 
ner. 

Tennyson, Frederick, 270. 

Tennysonian School, 269-271,440; L 
Morris, 451-453. 

Terseness, 361. 

Thackeray, William Makepeace, his 
English types, 24 ; gift of sketching, 
74 ; grim pathos, 79 ; compared 
with Hood, 80 ; poetic genius, 251, 



INDEX. 



519 



252 ; humorous verse, 272 ; and see 

92, 142, 262, 273. 
Thackeray, Miss, 337. 
"Thalysia," of Theocritus, 229-231. 
" Theatre Francais au Moyen Age," 

226. 
Theism, Browning's, 433. 
Theme, recent lack of, 49, 287 ; choice 

of, 405 ; and see Tradition. 
Theocritus, Landor's paper on, 69 ; 

editions of, 204, 209 ; and see 60, 

273, 348, 403, and Tennyson and 

Theocritus. 
Theology. — The divine and the poet, 

13- 

Theosophy, 450. 

Theory, Arnold's poetic, 92. 

Thorn, William, 261, 279. 

Thomson, 265. 

Thomson, J., author of The City of 

Dreadful Night, 455-457 ; a man of 

genius, id. ; resemblance to Poe, ib. ; 

posthumous volume, 457 ; and see 

480. 
Thornbury, Geo. Walter, 252, 262, 440. 
" Thyrsis," Arnold's, 98, 99, 168, 396. 
Tibullus, 224. 
Tilton, Theodore, his sketch of Mrs. 

Browning, 131, 140. 
" Timbuctoo," Tennyson's, 209. 
Tiresias, Tennyson's, 420. 
Tone, effect of, 92. 
Tradition vs. Invention, 164, 370. 
Training, Arnold an example of, 91 ; 

Symonds's, 447-449. 
Transcendentalism, a perilous quality 

in Art, 127; Home's, 249; that of 

Macdonald, Buchanan, and other 

North Country Poets, 264; Call, 

etc., 457 ; and see 299. 
Transition Periods, 14, 157, 342, 412. 
Translation and Translators, recent, 

273-278 ; new theory of translation, 



274 ; versions of Horace, Homer, 
Virgil, and other classical texts, 274, 
275, 472 ; female translators, 122, 
275; versions of Dante, Goethe, 
and other mediaeval and modern po- 
ets, 276, 472; Oriental, 276; this 
work a token of a refined and criti- 
cal period, 276 ; the early translators, 
Pitt, Rowe, Cooke, West, and 
Fawkes, 276 ; ancient and mediae- 
val Latin hymns, 277 ; hymns from 
the German, 278 ; Rossetti's trans- 
lations from the Italian, 360, from 
the old French, 364 ; Morris's, from 
the Icelandic, and from Virgil, 371, 
from Homer, 443 ; O'Shaughnessy, 
440 ; J. Payne, 445. 

Trench, Richard Chenevix, 242, 278. 

Trilogies. — Landor's, 42 ; Swinburne's, 
407. 

Tristram of Lyonesse, Swinburne's, 

43 6 - 
Trollope, Anthony, 189, 266. 
Troubadour Period, 359 ; and see Pre- 

Chaucerian Verse, etc. 
Tupper, Martin Farquhar, 256, 278, 

452. 
Turner, Charles (Tennyson), 270, 440. 

Unconventionalism, 333. 

Under the Microscope, Swinburne's 

402-404. 
Undertones, Buchanan's, 348. 
Unities, the classical, 387. 
University School, Symonds, 447-449; 

Dixon and Bridges, 463 ; Lang, 475; 

and see M. Arnold, etc., etc. 

Vane's Story, Thomson's, 456. 
Varian, Mrs. ("Finola"), 260. 
Variety, Morris deficient in,. 371. 
" Vastness," Tennyson's, 421, 423. 
Vaughan, 28, 283. 



520 



INDEX. 



Venetian Period, its taste and luxury, 
368. 

Verbal School, 76. 

Versatility, Buchanan's, 355 ; of the 
art-school, 368. 

Vers de Societe. See Society Verse. 

Verse, as a form of speech, 299. 

Vicar of Wakefield, The, 52. 

Victoria, accession of Her Majesty, 
234; her jubilee year, 415; prolon- 
gation of her reign, 433. 

Victorian Gothic Style, in architec- 
ture, 480. 

Victorian Period, review of its charac- 
ter and progress in poetry, 1-32; 
how far it illustrates Taine's theory, 
1, 2 ; points of variance from the 
same, 1,2; its outset, 4 ; successive 
phases and representative poets, 5, 
6 ; likeness to the Alexandrian era, 
6 ; general conditions, 6 ; its scien- 
tific iconoclasm, 7, 13, 14 ; effort of 
its poets to avail themselves of sci- 
entific progress, 8, 9, 19, 20, 21 ; 
spirit as compared with that of for- 
mer eras, 10-12, 21, 22 ; realistic 
tendencies, 12, 13 ; transitional as- 
pect, 14; idealism, 16, 17 ; psychical 
phases, 17 ; skepticism, 17, 18; both 
transitional and creative, 21; tran- 
sitional in thought and feeling, 22 ; 
creative in style and form, 22 ; crit- 
ical and scholarly, 23 ; restrictions 
to ideality : journalism, 23, novel- 
writing, 23, 25, over-refinement, 23, 
over-restraint, 24, high breeding, 24, 
impassibility, 24 ; not a dramatic 
period, 24, 25 ; not adventurous, 25 ; 
great advance in poetry as an art, 
25, 26 ; its effects upon the minor 
poets, 28 ; longing for novelty, 29, 
31 ; dilettanteism, 29 ; multitude of 
verse-makers, 29; leaders and rep- 



resentative poets, 30, 31 ; the end 
already indicated, 31, 32, 342 ; prom- 
ise for the future, 32 ; method of, 
34 ; has produced the greatest fe- 
male poet, 115; specially represent- 
ed by Tennyson, 1 54 ; resemblance 
to Alexandrian Period, 159, 202- 
209; its peculiar idyllic verse, 162; 
limits of its typical portion, 415; 
specific characteristics, 416 ; in- 
creased likeness to the Alexandrian, 
430,431,479; Browning the leader 
of its af terprime, 433 ; Swinburne's 
influence, 434 ; recent necrology, 
439-442 ; Austin on its Poetry, 450 ; 
extreme polish, 458; the Colonies, 
468-470 ; closing phases, 474-483 ; 
recent lack of a national style, 480- 
482 ; and see 200, 413. 

Victor Hugo, Swinburne's essay, 438. 

Villon, 435, 445, 474. 

" Violet Fane." See Mrs. Singleton. 

Virgil, 215, 375; translations of, 275. 

"Virginius," 296. 

Vision, clouded in Mrs. Browning, 
1 27 ; clear, in Morris, 374. 

Vita Nuova, 360. 

Vivia Perpetua, Mrs. Adams's, 257. 

Vivisection, Browning's skill in, 321, 

337- 
Voice, 382, 383. 
Voice from the Nile, A, Thomson's, 

457- 
Volapuk, the new language, 466. 
Voltaire, 36, 273. 

Wade, Thomas, 256. 

Wagner, Browning compared to, 341; 

and see 443. 
Wallenstein, 41, 310. 
Waller, Edmund, 272, 273. 
Waller, John Francis, 259. 
Warren, John Leicester, 283, 445. 



INDEX. 



521 



Warton, Thomas, 34, 40, 209. 

Warwickshire, 36. 

Watson, William, 465. 

Watts, Alaric, 237. 

Watts's Hymns, 277. 

Watts, Theodore, 435 ; sonnets and 
lyrics, 464. 

Waugh, Edwin, 279. 

Webster, Augusta, 275, 281, 443. 

Webster, John, 48, 105, 294. 

Wedded Poets, the Brownings, 333. 

Wellington Ode, Tennyson's, 172. 

Wells, Charles J., Joseph and His 
Brethren, 441. 

Wesley's Hymns, 277. 

Westwood, Thomas, 271. 

Whims and Oddities, Hood's, 77. 

White, Richard Grant, essay on " The 
Play of the Period," 24. 

White Rose and Red, Buchanan's, 355. 

Whitman, Walt, 402 ; on Tennyson, 
424; and see 428, 450, and Ameri- 
can Poets. 

Whittier, John Greenleaf, extract from 
Miriam, 14 ; and see American Poets. 

Wilde, Lady (" Speranza "), 260. 

Wilde, Oscar, 467. 

Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 246. 

Wills, W. G., 472. 

Wilson, John, 235, 480. 

Winkworth, Catherine, 278. 

Wiseman, Cardinal, 328. 



Wolf's Homeric theory, 175. 

Woman, Tennyson's view in The 
Princess, 167. 

Womanhood, rendered complete by 
marriage and maternity, 133, 136, 
140. 

Woolner, Thomas, 270, 368, 445. 

Word-painting, 174. 

Wordsworth, Christopher, 278. 

Wordsworth, William, his mission, 
and its close, 31, 34, yj '■> compared 
with Landor, 45 ; teacher of Arnold, 
96 ; shaped the mind of the idyllic 
school, 104, 105 ; influence on Ten- ^ 
nyson, 155; blank -verse, 161 ; on v 
Science and Poetry, 193 ; birth and 
death, 235 ; influence on the minor 
poets, 241 - 248 ; simplicity, 267 ; V 
quoted, 298 ; influence on Buchanan, 
347 ; and see 4, 15, 22, 56, 58, 154, 
167, 180, 198, 199, 203, 209, 237, 238, 
240, 242, 265, 292, 303, 320, 348, 349, 
396,400,412,415,417,476. 

Wordsworthian School, 241-248, 444. 

Worsley, Philip Stanhope, 275. 

Wright, Ichabod Charles, 275. 

Young, 361. 

Youth, united to the party of the fu- 
ture, 358 ; Arnold's expression of, 
442 ; Tennyson's Youth and Age, 
421, 422. 



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